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Number 365. Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. Price 25 Cts. 

Entered at the I\xt- Office at New York an Ste.onJ-claat Mall Matter. 




FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA TO THE GENERAL 

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35. SPORT AND WORK ON THE NEPAUL FRONTIER 10 

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31. AN EYE FOR AN EYE. A Novel. By Anthony Teollope 10 

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40. KELVERDALE. A Novel. By the Earl of Desart 15 

41. WITHIN SOUND OF THE SEA. A Novel 10 

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46. JOURNAL OP THE PLAGUE IN' LONDON. By Daniel Defoe 10 

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50. QUAKER COUSINS. A Novel. Bv Agnes Macdonell 15 

51. THE SHERLOCKS. A Novel. By John Saunders 15 

52. THAT ARTFUL VICAR. A Novel 15 

53. UNDER ONE ROOF. A Novel. By James Payn 15 

54. EOTHEN. By Alexander William Kinglake 10 

55. "FOR A DREAM'S SAKE." A Novel. By Mrs. Herbert Martin 15 

56. LADY LEE'S WIDOWHOOD. A Novel. By Captain Edward B. Ham- 

ley, R. A 15 

57. A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, FROM THE ACCESSION OP 

QUEEN VICTORIA TO THE GENERAL ELECTION OP 1SS0. Part 

I. Bv Jcstin MoCartiit 20 

57a. A HISTORY" OF OUR OWN TIMES. Part II. By Justin MoCartiiy 20 

53. BASILDON. A Novel. By Mrs. Alfred W. Hunt 15 

59. JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN. A Novel. By Miss Mui.ock 15 

00. ORANGE LILY. A Novel. By May Crommelin 10 

c,l. IMPRESSIONS "l.' TUEOPIIR \STI s SI'. II. P.v Ge.o-.oi: Ei i..t In 

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63. JOHN CALDIGATE. A Novel. By Anthony Trollops 15 

64. THE HOUSE OF LYS. A Tale. Bv Major-General W. G. Hamley 15 

65. HENRY" ESMOND. A Novel. Bv W. M. Thackeray 15 

66. THE LIFE OF CHARLES LEVER. By W. J. Fitzpatriok 15 

67. MR. LESLIE OF UNDERWOOD. A Novel. By Mary Patrick 15 

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69. DORCAS. ANovel. By Georgiana M. Craik 15 

70. THE GYPSY. ANovel. By G. P. R. James 20 

71. THE LIFE OF CHARLES JAMES MATHEWS. Edited by Cn 



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77. THE ADVENTURES OF REUBEN DAV1DGER. A Tale for Boys. By 

Jame6 Greenwood 15 

78. THE TALISMAN. Bv Sir Walter Scott, Bart. Illustrated 15 

79. THE PICKWICK PAPERS. By Charles Dickens 20 

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82. POEMS OF WORDSWORTH. Chosen and Edited bv Matthew Arnold 15 

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54. SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. ANovel. By Jane Austen 15 

85. THE BERTRAMS. ANovel. By Anthony Teollope 15 

S6. THE FUGITIVES. A Storv. By Mrs. Olipiiant. 10 

87. THE PARSON O' DUMFORD. ANovel. Bv George Manville Penn. 15 

55. HIGH SPIRITS : BEING CERTAIN STORIES WRITTEN IN THEM. 

By James Pavn 15 

S9. THE MISTLETOE BOUGH FOR 1879. Edited by M. E. Braddon 10 

90. THE EGOIST. A Comedy in Narrative. Bv George Meredith 15 

91. THE BELLS OF PENRAVEN. A Novel. "By B. L. Faejeon 10 

92. A FEW MONTHS IN NEW GUINEA. By O. C. Stone 10 

93. A DOUBTING HEART. ANovel. By Annie Keary 15 

94 LITTLE MISS PRIMROSE. ANovel. By Eliza Tabor 15 



cents. 

95. DONNA QUIXOTE. ANovel. By Justin McCarthy 16 

96. NELL— ON AND OFF THE STAGE. ANovel. Bv B. H. Buxton.... 15 

97. MEMOIRS OF MADAME DE RBMUSAT. 1S02-180S 10 

98. MADAME DE REMUSAT. Part II 10 

9Srt. MADAME DE REMUSAT. Part III. With 20 Portraits 10 

99. SWEET NELLY, MY HEART'S DELIGHT. ANovel. Bv James Rice 

and Walter Besant 10 

100. THE MUNSTER CIRCUIT: TALES, TRIALS, AND TRADITIONS. 

By J. Rodebiok O'Flanagan 15 

101. SIR JOHN. ANovel. Bv the Author of "Anne Dvsart " 15 

102. THE GREATEST HEIRESS IN ENGLAND. A Novel. By Mrs. 



Ol 



15 



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104. FRIEND AND LOVER. ANovel. Bv Iza Dcffus Hardy 15 

105. COUSIN SIMON. ANovel. By the Hon. Mrs. R. Marsham 10 

100. MADEMOISELLE DE MERSAC. ANovel. By W. E. Norris 20 

107. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. A History. Bv Robert Mackenzie 15 

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111. THE RETURN OF THE TRINCESS. ANovel. By J. Vinoent 10 

112. RUSSIA BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR 15 

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114. TWO WOMEN. ANovel. By Georgiana M. Craik 15 

115. DAIEEEN. ANovel. By Frank Frankfort Moore 15 

116. FOR HER DEAR SAKE. ANovel. By Mary Cecil Hay 16 

117. PRINCE HUGO. A Bright Episode. B'v Maria M. Grant 15 

118. FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION. A Novel. By Lady Au- 

gusta Noei 15 

119. YOUNG LORD PENRITH. A Novel. Bv J. B. Haewood 15 

120. CLARA VAUG1IAN. ANovel. By P.. D. Blaokmore 15 

121. THE HEART OF HOLLAND. By Henry Havard 10- 

122. REATA. ANovel. By E. D. Gerard 20 

123. MARY" ANERLEY. A'YORKSIIIRE TALE. By R. D. Blaokmore. .. . 15 

124. THE PENNANT FAMILY. ANovel. By Anne Beale. 15 

125. POET AND PEER. ANovel. By Hamilton Aide 15 

126. THE DUKE'S CHILDREN. ANovel. By Anthony Teollope 20 

127. THE QUEEN. By Mrs. Olipuant. Illustrated 25 

12-. MISS BOUVERIE. ANovel. By Mrs. Mom-.swoetii 15 

129. DAVID ARMSTRONG; OR, BEFORE THE DAWN. ANovel 10 

130. HYPATIA. ANovel. By Ciiari.es Kingsley 20 

131. CAPE COD AND ALL ALONG SHORE. Stories. By Chas. Noeduoff 15 

132. LIFE OF JAMES A. GARFIELD. With Extracts from his Speeches. 

By Edmund Kirke. Illustrated 20 

133. CROSS PURPOSES. ANovel. By Cecilia Findlay 10 

134. CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN. ANovel. By C. G. Hamilton 15 

135. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. ANovel. By Jane Austen 15 

136. WHITE WINGS : A Yachtiun Romance. By William Black 20 

137. CAST UP BY THE SEA. A Storv for Bovs. Bv Sir S. W. Baker. Ill'd. 15 
13S. THE MUDFOG PAPERS, &o. Bv Charles Dickens 10 

139. LORD BRACKENBURY. ANovel. Bv Amelia B. Edwards 15 

140. A MEMOIR OP THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. By his Daughter, Lady 

Holland 16 

141. JUST AS I AM. ANovel. By M. E. Braddon 16- 

142. A SAILOR'S SWEETHEART. ANovel. By W. Clark Russell 15 

143. THREE VOLUMES OF THE "ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS." ED- 

ITED BY JOHN MORLEY. BURNS. By Principal Shairf.— 

GOLDSMITH. Bv William Black.— BUNYAN. Bv J. A. Frocdf... 15 

144. THREE VOLUMES' OF THE " ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS," ED- 

ITED BY JOHN MORLEY. JOHNSON. By Leslie Stephen.— 

SCOTT. By R. H Hutton.— THACKERAY. Bv A. Troli.ope 20 

145. THREE RECRUITS. AND THE GIRLS THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM. 

A Novel. By Joseph Hatton 15 

146. THE EARLY' HISTORY" OF CHARLES JAMES FOX. By Geoege 

Otto Teevelyan. Author of "The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay." 20 

147. HORACE McLEAN. ANovel. By Alice O'Hanlon 15 

14S. FROM THE WINGS. ANovel. Bv B. H Buxton 15 

149. nE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY". ANovel. Bv Mrs. Oi.iphant 20 

150. ENDY'MION. A Novel. By the Earl of Beaoonsfiei.d. (With a Key to 

the Characters) 15 

151. DUTY. Bv Samuel Smiles, LL.D 15 

152. A CONFIDENTIAL AGENT. A Novel. By James Payn 15 

153. LOVE AND LIFE. A Novel. Bv Charlotte M. Y'onoe 15 

154. THE REBEL OF THE FAMILY.' ANovel. By E. Lynn Linton 20 

155. DR. WORTLE'S SCHOOL.' ANovel. Bv Anthony Teollope 15 

156. LITTLE PANSY. ANovel. By Mrs. Randolph 20 

157. THE DEAN'S WIFE. ANovel. By Mrs. C. J. Eii.oart 20 

158. THE POSY RING. ANovel. By Airs. Alfred W. Hunt 10 

159. BETTER THAN GOOD. A Storv for Girls. Bv Annie E. Ridley 15 

160. UNDER LIFE'S KEY. AND OTHER STORIES". By Mary Cecil Hay 15 

161. ASPHODEL. ANovel. Bv M. E. Braddon 15 

162. SUNRISE. ANovel. Bv William Bi.aok 15 

163. THE GLEN OF SILVER BIRCHES. A Novel. By E. O. Blaokburne 15 

164. SOCIAL ETIQUETTE AND HOAIE CULTURE 20 

105. THE WARDS OF PLOTINUS. ANovel. By Airs. John Hunt 20 

166. REMINISCENCES BY THOMAS CARLYLE. Edited by James An- 



167. HIS LITTLE MOTHER. AND OTHER TALES AND SKETCHES. By 
Miss Atu 



165. LIFE OF GEORGE IV. Parti. Bv Percy Fitzgerald 20 

169. LIFE OF GEORGE IV. Part II. By Peroy Fitzgerald 20 

170. INTO TOR SHADE, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mary Cecil Hay.. IS 

171. CvESAR. A Sketch. By James Anthony Froude 20 

172. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE" METTERNICH. 1773-1S15. Edited by Prince 

Richard Metternich. The Papers Classified and Arranged bv M. A. 

De Klinkowstrom. Translated bv Mrs. Alexander Napier. Parti... 20 

173. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE METTERNICH. 1773-1815. Part II 20' 

174. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE METTERNICH. 1815-1829. Part III 20 

175. MEMOIRS OF PRINCE METTERNICH. 1S15-1S29. Part IV 20 

176. FROAI EXILE. ANovel. Bv James Payn 15 

177. MISS WILLIAMSON'S DIVAGATIONS. Stories. By Miss Tuackerat 15 
17S. THOJIAS CARLYLE. By William Howie Wylie 20 



(.Continued on tJie page following the end of this work.) 




Number 365. 



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A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES, 

FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA TO THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1880, 



By justin McCarthy, m.p. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. A New Reign Opens — II. Some Trembles to the New Reign — III. Decline and Fall of the Melbourne Ministry IV. The Afghan War.— V. Peel's 

Administration. -VL The Anti-Corn Law League.— VII. Mr. Disraeli.— VIII. Famine and Political Trouble.— IX. Athens, Rome, and London.— X. Palmerston.— 
XI. The Crimean War.— XII. The Lorcha Arrow. Transportation.— XIII. The Indian Mutiny.— XIV. The End of "John Company."— XV. The Conspiracy Bill!— 
XVI. Disraeli's First Reform Enterprise.— XVII. Lord Palmerston Again. -XVIII. The Civil War in America.— XIX. The Last of Lord Palmerston.— XX. The New 
Government.— XXI. Reform. — XXII. Strife at Home and Abroad. -XXIII. Irish Questions.— XXIV. "Reformation in a Flood."— XXV. The Fall of the Great 
Administration XXVI. Lord Beaconstield. — XXVII. The Congress of Berlin. 



CHAPTER I. 

A NEW REIGN OPENS. 

Before half-past two o'clock on the morning 
of June 20, 1837. William IV, was lying dead 
in Windsor Castle, while the messengers were 
already hurrying ofF to Kensington Palace, to 
bear to his successor her summons to the 
throne. With William ended the reign of per- 
sonal government in England. King William 
had always held to and exercised the right to 
dismiss his ministers when he pleased, and be- 
cause he pleased. In our day we should believe 
that the constitutional freedom of England was 
outraged, if a sovereign were to dismiss a minis- 
try at mere pleasure, or to retain it in despite of 
the expressed wish of the House of Commons. 

The manners of William IV. had been, like 
those of most of his brothers, somewhat rough 
and overbearing. He had been an unmanage- 
able naval officer. He had made himself unpop- 
ular while Duke of Clarence by his strenuous 
opposition to some of the measures which were 
especially desired by all the enlightenment of 
the country. He was, for example, a deter- 
mined opponent of the measures for the aboli- 
tion of the slave trade. But William seems to 
have been one of the men whom increased re- 
sponsibility improves. He was far better as a 
king than as a prince. lie proved that he was 
able at least to understand that first duty of a 
constitutional sovereign which, to the last day 
of bis active life, his father, George III., never 
could he brought to comprehend — that the per- 
sona] predilections and prejudices of the King 
must sometimes gix'e way to the public interest. 
We must judge William by the reigns that went 
before, and not the reign that came after him, 
and admit that on the whole he was better than 
his education, his early opportunities, and his 
early promise. 



William IV. (third son of George III.) bad 
left no children who could have succeeded to the 
throne, and the crown passed therefore to the 
daughter of his brother (fourth son of George), 
the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess Alex- 
andria Victoria, who was born at Kensington 
Palace, on May 24, 1819. The Princess was 
therefore at this time little more than eighteen 
years of age. The Duke of Kent died a few 
months after the birth of his daughter, and the 
child was brought up under the care of his wid- 
ow. She was well brought up : both as regards 
her intellect and her character — her training was 
excellent. She was taught to be self-reliant, 
brave, and systematical. Prudence and econo- 
my were inculcated on her as though she had 
been born to be poor. One is not generally in- 
clined to attach much importance to what his- 
torians tell us of the education of contemporary 
princes or princesses, but it cannot he doubted 
that the Princess Victoria was trained for intel- 
ligence and goodness. 

There is a pretty description given by Miss 
Wynn of the manner in which the young sover- 
eign received the news of her accession to a 
throne. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. 
Ilowley, and the Lord Chamberlain, the Mar- 
quis of Conyngham, left Windsor for Kensington 
Palace, where the Princess Victoria had been 
residing, to inform her of the King's death. It 
was two hours after midnight when they started, 
and they did not reach Kensington until rive 
o'clock in the morning. "They knocked, they 
rang, thej thumped for a considerable time be- 
fore they could rouse the porter at the gate ; 
they were again kept waiting in the court-yard, 
then turne, I into one of the lower rooms, where 
they seemed forgotten by everybody. They rang 
the In II, and desired that the attendant of the 
Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her 
Royal Highness that they requested an audience 



on business of importance. After another delay, 
and another ringing to inquire the cause, the at- 
tendant was summoned, who stated that the 
Princess was in such a sweet sleep that she could 
not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 
' We are come on business of state to the 
Queen, and even her sleep must give way to 
that.' It did; and to prove that she did not 
keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came 
into the room, in a loose white night-gown and 
shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair fall- 
ing upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears 
in her eyes, but perfectly collected and digni- 
fied." The Prime- minister, Lord Melbourne, 
was presently sent for, and a meeting of the 
Privy Council summoned for eleven o'clock, 
when the Lord Chancellor administered the usu- 
al oaths to the Queen, and her Majesty received 
in return the oaths of allegiance of the Cabi- 
net ministers and other privy councillors pres- 
ent. 

The interest or curiosity with which the de- 
meanor of the young Queen was watched was 
all the keener because the world in general knew 
so little about her. Not merely was the world 
in general thus ignorant, but even the statesmen 
and officials in closest communication with court 
circles were in almost absolute ignorance. The 
young Queen had been previously kept in such 
seclusion by her mother, that "not one of her 
acquaintance, none of the attendants at Kensing- 
ton, not even the Duchess of Northumberland, 
her governess, have any idea what she is or what 
she promises to be." There was enough in the 
court of the two sovereigns who went before 
Queen Victoria to justify any strictness of seclu- 
sion which the Duchess of Kent might desire for 
her daughter. No one can read even the most 
favorable descriptions given by contemporaries 
of the manners of those two courts without 
feeling grateful to the Duchess of Kent for 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



resolving that her daughter should see as little 
as possible of their ways and their company. 

It is not necessary to go into any formal de- 
scription of the proclamation of the Queen, her 
appearance for the first time on the throne in 
the House of Lords when she prorogued Parlia- 
ment in person, and even the gorgeous festival 
of her coronation, which took place on June 28, 
in the following year, 1838. It is a fact, how- 
ever, well worthy of note, amid whatever records 
of court ceremonial and of political change, that 
a few days after the accession of the Queen Mr. 
Montefiore was elected Sheriff of London, the 
first Jew who had ever been chosen for that of- 
fice; and that he received knighthood at the 
hands of her Majesty when she visited the City 
on the following Lord Mayor's day. He was 
the first Jew whom royalty had honored in this 
country since the good old times when royalty 
, was pleased to borrow the Jew's money, or order 
instead the extraction of his teeth. The expan- 
sion of the principle of religious liberty and 
equality which has been one of the most remark- 
able characteristics of the reign of Queen Vic- 
toria, could hardly have been more becomingly 
inaugurated than by the compliment which sov- 
ereign and city paid to Sir Moses Montefiore. 

The first signature attached to the Act of 
Allegiance presented to the Queen at Kensing- 
ton Palace was that of her eldest surviving 
uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The fact 
may be taken as an excuse for introducing a few 
words here to record the severance of the con- 
nection which had existed for some generations 
between this country and Hanover. The con- 
nection was only personal, the Hanoverian kings 
of England being also by succession sovereigns 
of Hanover. The crown of Hanover was limited 
in its descent to the male line, and it passed on 
the death of William IV. to his eldest surviving 
brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The 
change was in almost every way satisfactory to 
the English people. The indirect connection 
between England and Hanover had at no time 
been a matter of gratification to the public of 
this country, and Englishmen were not by any 
means sorry to be rid of the Duke of Cumber- 
land. Not many of George III.'s sons were 
popular ; the Duke of Cumberland was probably 
the least popular of all. His manners were 
rude, overbearing, and sometimes even brutal. 
Rumor not unnaturally exaggerated his defects, 
and in the mouths of many his name was the 
symbol of the darkest and fiercest passions, and 
even crimes. Some of the popular reports with 
regard to him had their foundation only in the 
common detestation of his character and dread 
of his influence. But it is certain that he was 
profligate, selfish, overbearing, and quarrelsome. 

It was felt in England that the mere departure 
of the Duke of Cumberland from this country 
would have made the severance of the connec- 
tion with Hanover desirable, even if it had not 
been in other ways an advantage to us. Later 
times have shown how much we have gained by 
the separation. It would have been exceedingly 
inconvenient, to say the least, if the crown worn 
by a sovereign of England had been hazarded 
in the war between Austria and Prussia in 1866. 
Our reigning family must have seemed to suffer 
in dignity if that crown had been roughly 
knocked off the head of its wearer who happened 
to be an English sovereign ; and it would have 
been absurd to expect that the English people 
could engage in a quarrel with which their in- 
terests and honor had absolutely nothing to do, 
for the sake of a mere family possession of their 
ruling house. 

Lord Melbourne was the first Minister of the 
Crown when the Queen succeeded to the throne. 
He was a man who then and always after made 
himself particularly dear to the Queen, and for 
whom she had the strongest regard. He was 
of kindly, somewhat indolent, nature ; fair and 
even generous towards his political opponents; 
of the most genial disposition towards his friends. 
He was emphatically not a strong man. He 
was not a man to make good grow where it was 
not already growing. He was a kindly coun- 
sellor to a young Queen ; and happily for her- 
self the young Queen in this case had strong, 



clear sense enough of her own not to be absolute- 
ly dependent on any counsel. Lord Melbourne 
was not a statesman. His best qualities, per- 
sonal kindness and good nature apart, were 
purely negative. He was, unfortunately, not 
content even with the reputation for a sort of 
indolent good-nature which lie might have well 
deserved. He strove to make himself appear 
hopelessly idle, trivial, and careless. When he 
really was serious and earnest he seemed to 
make it his business to look like one in whom 
no human affairs could call up a gleam of inter- 
est. We have amusing pictures of him as he 
occupied himself in blowing a feather or nursing 
a sofa-cushion while receiving an important and 
perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or 
that commercial "interest." Those who knew 
him insisted that he really was listening with all 
his might and main ; that he bad sat up the 
whole night before studying the question which 
he seemed to think so unworthy of any atten- 
tion ; and that so far from being wholly absorbed 
in bis trifles, he was at very great pains to keep 
up the appearance of a tiifler. 

Such a masquerading might perhaps have been 
excusable, or even attractive, in the case of a man 
of really brilliant and commanding talents. But 
in Lord Melbourne's case the affectation had no 
such excuse or happy effect. He was a poor 
speaker, only fitted to rule in the quietest times. 
Debates were then conducted with a bitterness 
of personality unknown, or at all events very 
rarely known, in our days. Even in the House 
of Lords language was often interchanged of the 
most virulent hostility. 

Lord Melbourne's constant attendance on the 
young Queen was regarded with keen jealousy 
and dissatisfaction. According to some critics, 
the Prime-minister was endeavoring to inspire 
her with all his own gay heedlessness of char- 
acter and temperament. According to others, 
Lord Melbourne's purpose was to make himself 
agreeable and indispensable to the Queen ; to 
surround her with his friends, relations, and 
creatures, and thus to get a lifelong hold of 
power in England, in defiance of political changes 
and parties. But he does not appear to have 
been greedy of power, or to have used any un- 
fair means of getting or keeping it. The char- 
acter of the young Sovereign seems to have im- 
pressed him deeply. His real or affected levity 
gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make 
her life as happy and her reign as successful as 
he could. The Queen always felt the warmest 
affection and gratitude for him. Still, it is cer- 
tain that the Queen's Prime-minister was by no 
means a popular man at the time of her acces- 
sion. When tbe new reign began the Ministry 
had two enemies or critics in the House of Lords 
of the most formidable character. Either alone 
would have been a trouble to a minister of far 
stronger mould than Lord Melbourne ; but cir- 
cumstances threw them both for the moment into 
a chance alliance against him. 

One of these was Lord Brougham. No char- 
acter stronger and stranger than his is described 
in the modern history of England. He was 
gifted with the most varied and striking talents, 
and with a capacity for labor which sometimes 
seemed almost superhuman. Not merely had 
he the capacity for labor, but he appeared to 
have a positive passion for work. His restless 
energy seemed as if it must stretch itself out on 
every side seeking new fields of conquest. The 
study that was enough to occupy the whole time 
and wear out the frame of other men was only 
recreation to him. His physical strength never 
gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. 
His self-confidence was boundless. He thought 
he knew everything and could do everything 
better than any other man. His vanity was 
overweening, and made him ridiculous almost 
as often and as much as his genius made him 
admired. " If Brougham knew a little of law," 
said O'Connell, when the former became Lord 
Chancellor, " he would know a little of every- 
thing." The anecdote is told in another way, 
too, which perhaps makes it even more piquant : 
"The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of 
everything in the world — even of law." He was 
beyond doubt a great Parliamentary orator, 



although not an orator of the highest class. 
Brougham's action was wild, and sometimes 
even furious ; his gestures were singularly un- 
graceful ; bis manners were grotesque ; but of 
his power over his hearers there could lie no 
doubt. That power remained with him until a 
far later date, and long at'tev the years when men 
usually continue to take part in political debate 
Lord Brougham could be impassioned, impres- 
sive, and even overwhelming. If his talents 
were great, if his personal vanity was immense, 
let it be said that his services to the cause of hu- 
man freedom and education were simply inesti- 
mable. As an opponent of slavery in the colo- 
nies, as an advocate of political reform at home, 
of law reform, of popular education, of religious 
equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, 
with resistless passion, and with splendid suc- 
cess. He was left out of office on the recon- 
struction of the Whig Ministry in April, 1835, 
and he passed for the remainder of his life into 
the position of an independent or unattached 
critic of the measures and policy of other men. 
It has never been clearly known why the Whigs 
so suddenly threw over Brougham. The com- 
mon belief is that his eccentricities and his al- 
most savage temper made him intolerable in a 
cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that for a 
while his intellect was actually under a cloud, 
as people said that of Chatham was during a 
momentous season. Lord Brougham was not 
a man likely to forget or forgive the wrong which 
he must have believed that he had sustained at 
tbe hands of the Whigs. He became the fiercest 
and most formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile 
critics. 

The other great opponent was Lord Lynd- 
burst. He was one of the most effective Parlia- 
mentary debaters of his time. His style was 
singularly and even severely clear, direct, and 
pure ; his manner was easy and graceful ; his 
voice remarkably sweet and strong. Nothing 
could have been in greater contrast than his clear, 
correct, nervous argument, and the impassioned 
invectives and overwhelming strength of Brough- 
am. Lyndhurst had an immense capacity for 
work, when the work had to be done ; but his nat- 
ural tendency was as distinctly towards indolence 
as Brougham's was towards unresting activity. 
Nor were Lyndhurst's political convictions ever 
very clear. By the habitude of associating with 
the Tories, and receiving office from them, and 
speaking for them, and attacking their enemies 
with argument and sarcasm, Lyndhurst finally 
settled down into all the ways of Toryism. But 
nothing in his varied history showed that he had 
any particular preference that way : and there 
were many passages in his career when it would 
seem as if a turn of chance decided what part of 
political life he was to follow. As a keen de- 
bater he was perhaps hardly ever excelled in 
Parliament; but he had neither the passion nor 
the genius of the orator ; and his capacity was 
narrow indeed in its range when compared with 
the astonishing versatility and omnivorous men- 
tal activity of Brougham. As a speaker he 
was always equal. He seemed to know no vary- 
ing moods or fits of mental lassitude. Whenever 
he spoke he reached at once the same high level 
as a debater. The very fact may in itself, per- 
haps, be taken as conclusive evidence that he 
was not an orator. The higher qualities of the 
orator are no more to be summoned at will than 
those of the poet. 

These two men were, without any comparison, 
the two leading debaters in the House of Lords. 
Lord Melbourne had not at that time in the Up- 
per House a single man of first-class or even of 
second-class debating power on the bench of the 
Ministry. An able writer has well remarked 
that the position of the Ministry in the House 
of Lords might be compared to that of a water- 
logged wreck, into which enemies from all quar- 
ters are pouring their broadsides. 

Tbe law at that time made it necessary that 
a new Parliament should be summoned on the 
accession of the new Sovereign. The result was 
not a very marked alteration in the condition of 
parties ; but on the whole the advan tage was 
with the Tories. Somewhere about this time, 
it may be remarked, the use of the word " Con- 



A SHORT HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. 



servative " to describe the latter political part/ 
first came into fashion. During the elections 
for the new Parliament, Lord John Russell, 
speaking at a public dinner at Stroud, made al- 
lusion to the new name which his opponents 
were beginning to affect for their party. "If 
that," he said, " is the name that pleases them, 
if they say that the old distinction of Whig and 
Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, 
in opposition to their name of Conservative, to 
take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that 
opposition." 

The new Parliament on its assembling seems 
to have gathered in the Commons an unusually 
large number of gifted and promising men. 
Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, sat for the 
City of London. The late Lord Lytton, then 
Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, had a seat, an ad- 
vanced Radical at that day. Mr. Disraeli came 
then into Parliament for the first time. Charles 
Buller, full of high spirits, brilliant humor, and 
the very inspiration of keen good-sense, seemed 
on the sure way to that career of renown which 
a premature death cut short. Sir William 
Molesworth was an excellent type of the school 
which in later days was called the Philosophical 
Radical. Another distinguished member of the 
same school, Mr. Roebuck, had lost his seat, and 
was for the moment an outsider. Mr. Gladstone 
had been already five years in Parliament. The 
late Lord Carlisle, then Lord Morpeth, was 
looked upon as a graceful specimen of the liter- 
ary and artistic young nobleman, who also cul- 
tivates a little politics for his intellectual amuse- 
ment. Lord John Russell had but lately begun 
his career as leader of the House of Commons. 
Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, but 
had not even then got the credit of the great 
ability which he possessed. Only those who 
knew him very well had any idea of the capac- 
ity for governing Parliament and the country 
which he was soon afterwards to display. Sir 
Robert Peel was leader of the Conservative par- 
ty. Lord Stanley, the late Lord Derby, was 
still in the House of Commons. He had not 
long before broken definitely with the Whigs on 
the question of the Irish ecclesiastical establish- 
ment, and had passed over to that Conservative 
party of which he afterwards became the most 
influential leader, and the most powerful Par- 
liamentary orator. 

The ministry was not very strong in the House 
of Commons. Its adherents were but loosely 
held together. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of 
the Opposition, was by far the most powerful 
man in the House. Added to his great qualities 
as an administrator and a Parliamentary debater, 
he had the virtue, then very rare among Conser- 
vative statesmen, of being a sound and clear 
financier, with a good grasp of the fundamental 
principles of political economy. His high, aus- 
tere character made him respected by opponents 
as well as by friends. He had not perhaps many 
intimate friends. His temperament was cold, 
or at least its heat was self-contained : he threw 
out no genial glow to those around him. He 
was by nature a reserved and shy man, in whose 
manners shyness took the form of pompousness 
and coldness. It is certain that he had warm 
and generous feelings, but his very sensitiveness 
only led him to disguise them. The contrast be- 
tween his emotions and his lack of demonstrative- 
ness created in him a constant artificiality which 
often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the 
House of Commons that his real genius and 
character displayed themselves. Peel was a per- 
fect master of the House of Commons. He was 
as great an orator as any man could be who ad- 
dresses himself to the House of Commons, its 
ways and its purposes alone. Sir Robert Peel 
had little imagination, and almost none of that 
passion which in eloquence sometimes supplies its 
place. His style was clear, strong, and stately ; 
full of various argument and apt illustration 
drawn from books and from the world of politics 
and commerce. He followed a difficult argu- 
ment home to its utter conclusions; and if it had 
in it any lurking fallacy, he brought out the weak- 
ness into the clearest light, often with a happy 
touch of humor and quiet sarcasm. His speeches 
might be described as the very perfection of good- 



sense and high principle clothed in the most im- 
pressive language. Rut they were something 
more peculiar than this, for they were so con- 
structed, in their argument and their style alike, 
as to touch the very core of the intelligence of 
the House of Commons. They told of the feel- 
ings and the inspiration of Parliament as the bal- 
lad-music of a country tells of its scenery and its 
national sentiments. 

Lord Stanley was a far more energetic and 
impassioned speaker than Sir Robert Peel, and 
perhaps occasionally, in his later career, came 
now and then nearer to the height of genuine or- 
atory. But Lord Stanley was little more than a 
splendid Parliamentary partisan, even when, long 
after, he was Prime-minister of England. He 
had very little indeed of that class of information 
which the modern world requires of its statesmen 
and leaders. Of political economy, of finance, 
of the development and the discoveries of mod- 
ern science, he knew almost as little as it is pos- 
sible for an able and energetic man to know who 
lives in the throng of active life and hears what 
people are talking of around him. He once said 
good-humoredlv of himself that he was brought 
up in the prescientific period. He had, in fact, 
what would have been called at an earlier day 
an elegant scholarship ; he had a considerable 
knowledge of the politics of his time in most Eu- 
ropean countries, an energetic, intrepid spirit, and 
with him the science of Parliamentary debate 
seemed to be an instinct. There was no speaker 
on the ministerial benches at that time who could 
for a moment be compared with him. 

Lord John Russell, who had the leadership of 
the party in the House of Commons, was really 
a much stronger man than he seemed to be. He 
had a character for dauntless courage and confi- 
dence among his friends; for boundless self-con- 
ceit among his enemies. He had in truth much 
less genius than his friends and admirers be- 
lieved, and a great deal more of practical strength 
than either friends or foes gave him credit for. 
He became, not indeed an orator, but a very keen 
debater, who was especially effective in a cold, ir- 
ritating sarcasm which penetrated the weakness 
of an opponent's argument like some dissolving 
acid. The thin, bright stream of argument 
worked its way slowly out, and contrived to 
wear a path for itself through obstacles which at 
first the looker-on might have felt assured it 
never could penetrate. 

Our English system of government by party 
makes the history of Parliament seem like that 
of a succession of great political duels. Two 
men stand constantly confronted during a series 
of years, one of whom is at the head of the Gov- 
ernment, while the other is at the head of the 
Opposition. They change places with each vic- 
tory. The conqueror goes into office ; the con- 
quered into opposition. It has often happened 
that the two leading opponents are men of intel- 
lectual and oratorical powers so fairly balanced 
that their followers may well dispute among 
themselves as to the superiority of their respect- 
ive chiefs, and that the public in general may 
become divided into two schools, not merely po- 
litical but even critical, according to their par- 
tiality for one or the other. For many years 
Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel stood 
thus opposed. Peel had by far the more origin- 
al mind, and Lord John Russell never obtained 
so great an influence over the House of Com- 
mons as that which his -rival long enjoyed. 
Lord John Russell was a born reformer. He 
had sat at the feet of Fox. He was cradled in 
the principles of Liberalism. He held faithfully 
to his creed ; he was one of its boldest and 
keenest champions. He had great advantages 
over Peel, in the mere fact that he had begun 
his education in a more enlightened school. But 
he wanted passion quite as much as Peel did, 
and remained still farther than Peel below the 
level of the genuine orator. 

After the chiefs of Ministry and of Opposition, 
the most conspicuous figure in the House of 
Commons was the colossal form of O'Connell, 
the great Irish agitator, of whom we shall hear 
a good deal more. Among the foremost orators 
of the House at that time was O'Connell's im- 
passioned lieutenant, Richard Lalor Shiel. 



A reign which saw in its earliest years the 
application of the electric current to the task of 
transmitting messages, the first successful at- 
tempts to make use of steam for the business 
of transatlantic navigation, the general develop- 
ment of the railway system all over these coun- 
tries, and the introduction of the penny -post, 
must be considered to have obtained for itself, 
had it secured no other memorials, an abiding 
place in history. The history of the past forty 
or fifty years is almost absolutely distinct from 
that of any preceding period. In all that part 
of our social life which is affected by industrial 
and mechanical appliances we see a complete 
revolution. A man of the present day suddenly 
thrust back fifty years in life wotdd find himself 
almost as awkwardly unstated to the ways of 
that time as if he were sent back to the age 
when the Romans occupied Britain. He would 
find himself harassed at every step he took. He 
could do hardly anything as he does it to-day. 
Sir Robert Peel travelled from Rome to London 1 
to assume office as Prime-minister, exactly as 
Constantine travelled from York to Rome to 
become Emperor. Each traveller had all that 
sails and horses could do for him, and no 
more. A few years later Peel might have 
reached London from Rome in some forty-eight 
hours. 

It is a somewhat curious coincidence that, in 
the year when Professor Wheatstone and Mr. 
Cooke took out their first patent " for improve- 
ments in giving signals and sounding alarms in 
distant places by means of electric currents 
transmitted through metallic circuit," Professor 
Morse, the American electrician, applied to Con- 
gress for aid in the construction and carrying on 
of a small electric telegraph to convey messages 
a short distance, and made the application with* 
out success. In the following year he came to 
this country to obtain a patent for his invention ; 
but he was refused. He had come too late. 
Our own countrymen were beforehand with 
him. Very soon after we find experiments 
made with the electric telegraph between Euston 
Square and Camden Town. The London and 
Birmingham Railway was opened through its 
whole length in 1838. The Liverpool and 
Preston line was opened in the same year. The 
Liverpool and Birmingham had been opened in 
the year before ; the London and Croydon was 
opened the year after. The Act for the trans- 
mission of the mails by railways was passed in 
1838. In the same year it was noted as an un- 
paralleled, and to many an almost incredible, 
triumph of human energy and science over time 
and space, that a locomotive had been able to 
travel at a speed of thirty-seven miles an hour. 

Steam communication was successfully estab- 
lished between England and the United States. 
The Sirius, the Great Western, and the Royal 
William accomplished voyages between New 
York and this country in the early part of 1838. 
The Great Western crossed the ocean from 
Bristol to New York in fifteen days. She was 
followed by the Sirius, which left Cork for New 
York, and made the passage in seventeen days. 
The controversy as to the possibility of such 
voyages had no reference to the actual safety 
of such an experiment. During seven years the 
mails for the Mediterranean had been despatched 
by means of steamers. Neither the Sirius nor 
the Great Western* was the first vessel to cross 
the Atlantic by means of steam propulsion. 
Nearly twenty years before, a vessel called the 
Savannah, built at New York, crossed the ocean 
to Liverpool, and a voyage had been made 
round the Cape of Good Hope more lately still 
by a steamship. These expeditions, however, 
had really little or nothing to do with the prob- 
lem which was solved by the voyages of the 
Sirius and the Great Western. In the former 
instances the vessel made as much use of her 
steam propulsion as she could, but she had to 
rely a good deal on her capacity as a sailer. 
This was quite a different thing from the enter- 
prise of the Sirius and the Great Western, 
which was to cross the ocean by steam propul- 
sion only. It is evident, that so long as the 
steam power was to be used only as an auxilia- 
ry, it would be impossible to reckon on speed 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUK OWN TIMES. 



and certainty 01 arrival. The doubt was wheth- 
er a steamer could carry, with her cargo and 
passengers, fuel enough to serve for the whole 
of her voyage across the Atlantic. The expe- 
ditions of the Sirivs and the Great Western 
settled the whole question. Two years after the 
Great Western went out from Bristol to New 
York the Cunard line of steamers was estab- 
lished. The steam communication between 
Liverpool and New York became thenceforth as 
regular and as unvarying a part of the business 
of commerce as the journeys of the trains on 
the Great Western railway between London and 
Bristol. 

Up to this time the rates of postage were very 
high, and varied both as to distance and as to 
the weight and even the size or the shape of a 
letter. The average postage on every charge- 
able letter throughout the United Kingdom was 
sixpence farthing. A letter from London to 
Brighton cost eightpence; to Aberdeen one 
shilling and threepence half-penny; to Belfast 
one shilling and fourpence. Nor was this all; 
for if the letter were written on more than one 
sheet of paper it came under the operation of a 
higher scale of charge. Members of Parliament 
and members of the Government had the privilege 
of franking letters. The franking privilege con- 
sisted in the right of the privileged person to 
send bis own or any other person's letters through 
the post free of charge by merely writing his 
name on the outside. This meant, in plain 
words, that the letters of the class who could 
best afford to pay for them went free of charge, 
and that those who could least afford to pay had 
to pay double — the expense, that is to say, of 
carrying their own letters and the letters of the 
privileged and exempt. 

Mr. (afterwards Sir Rowland) Hill is the man 
to whom this country, and indeed all civilization, 
owes the adoption of the cheap and uniform sys- 
tem. His plan has been adopted by every State 
which professes to have a postal system at all. 
Mr. Hill belonged to a remarkable family. His 
father, Thomas Wright Hill, was a teacher, a 
man of advanced and practical views in popular 
education, a devoted lover of science, an advo- 
cate of civil and religious liberty, and a sort of 
celebrity in the Birmingham of his day. He 
had five sons, every one of whom made himself 
more or less conspicuous as a practical reformer 
in one path or another. The eldest of the sons 
was Matthew Davenport Hill, the philanthropic 
Recorder of Birmingham, who did so much for 
prison reform and for the reclamation of juvenile 
offenders. The third son was Rowland Hill, the 
author of the cheap postal system. Rowland 
Hill when a little, weakly child began to show 
some such precocious love for arithmetical cal- 
culations as Pascal showed for mathematics. 
His favorite amusement as a child was to lie on 
the hearthrug and count up figures by the hour 
together. As he grew up he became teacher of 
mathematics in his father's school. Afterwards 
he was appointed secretary to the South Aus- 
tralian Commission, and rendered much valuable 
service in the organization of the colony of South 
Australia. A picturesque and touching little il- 
lustration of the veritable hardships of the exist- 
ing system seems to have quickened his interest 
in postal reform. Miss Martiueau thus tells the 
Story : 

"Coleridge, when a young man, was walking 
through the Lake district, when he one day saw 
the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cot- 
tage door. The woman turned it over and exam- 
ined it, and then returned it, saying she could not 
pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing 
that the letter was from her brother, Coleridge 
paid the postage in spite of the manifest unwilling- 
ness of the woman. As soon as the postman was 
out of sight she showed Coleridge how his mon- 
ey had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. 
The sheet was blank. There was an agreement 
between her brother and herself that as long as 
all went well with him he should send a blank 
sheet in this way once a quarter; and she thus 
had tidings of him without expense of post- 
age. Most persons would have remembered 
this incident as a curious story to tell ; but there 
was one mind which wakened up at once to a 



sense of the significance of the fact. It struck 
Mr. Rowland Hill that there must be something 
wrong in a system which drove a brother and 
sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire 
to hear of one another's welfare." 

Mr. Hill gradually worked out for himself a 
comprehensive scheme of reform. He put it 
before the world early in 1S37. The root of 
Mr. Hill's system lay in the fact, made evident 
by him beyond dispute, that the actual cost of 
the conveyance of letters through the post was 
very trifling, and was but little increased by the 
distance over which they had to be carried. 
His proposal was, therefore, that the rates of 
postage should be diminished to a minimum ; 
that at the same time the speed of conveyance 
should be increased, and that there should be 
much greater frequency of despatch. He rec- 
ommended the uniform charge of one penny the 
half-ounce, without reference to the distance 
within the limits of the United Kingdom which 
the letter had to be carried. 

The Post-office authorities were at first un- 
compromising in their opposition to the scheme. 
They were convinced that it must involve an 
unbearable loss of revenue. But the Govern- 
ment took up the scheme with some spirit and 
liberality. Petitions from all the commercial 
communities were pouring in to support the 
plan, and to ask that at least it should have a 
fair trial. The Government at length deter- 
mined in 1839 to bring in a bill which should 
provide for the almost immediate introduction 
of Mr. Hill's scheme, and for the abolition of 
the franking system, except in the case of official 
letters actually sent on business directly belong- 
ing to her Majesty's service. The bill declared, 
as an introductory step, that the charge for post- 
age should be at the rate of fourpence for each 
letter under half an ounce in weight, irrespective 
of distance, within the limits of the United King- 
dom. This, however, was to be only a begin- 
ning; for, on January 10, 1840, the postage 
was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny per 
letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. 
Some idea of the effect it has produced upon the 
postal correspondence of the country may be 
gathered from the fact that in 1839, the last year 
of the heavy postage, the number of letters de- 
livered in Great Britain and Ireland was eighty- 
two millions, which included some five millions 
and a half of franked letters returning nothing 
to the revenue of the country ; whereas, in 1875, 
more than a thousand millions of letters were 
delivered in the United Kingdom. The popula- 
tion during the same time had not nearly doub- 
led itself. 

CHAPTER II. 

SOME TROUBLES TO THE. NEW REIGN. 

The new Queen's reign opened amid many 
grim and unpromising conditions of our social 
affairs. The winter of 1837-38 was one of un- 
usual severity and distress. There would have 
been discontent and grumbling, in any case, 
among the working-class, but the complaints were 
aggravated by a common belief that the young 
Queen was wholly under the influence of a frivo- 
lous and selfish minister, who occupied her with 
amusements while the poor were starving. It 
does not appear that there was at any time the 
slightest justification for such a belief; but it 
prevailed among the working -classes and the 
poor very generally, and added to the sufferings 
of genuine want the bitterness of imaginary 
wrong. 

Only a few weeks after the coronation of the 
Queen a great Radical meeting was held in 
Birmingham. A manifesto was adopted there 
which afterwards came to be known as the 
Chartist petition. With that moment Chartism 
began to be one of the most disturbing influ- 
ences of the political life of the country. For 
ten years it agitated England. It might have 
been a very serious danger if the State had been 
involved in any external difficulties. It was 
backed by much genuine enthusiasm, passion, 
and intelligence. It appealed strongly and nat- 
urally to whatever there was of discontent 
among the working -classes. Its fierce and fit- 
ful flame went out at last under the influence 



of the clear, strong, and steady light of political 
reform and education. The one great lesson it 
teaches is, that political agitation lives and is 
formidable only by virtue of what is reasonable 
in its demands. Thousands of ignorant and 
miserable men all over the country joined the 
Chartist agitation who cared nothing about the 
substantial value of its political claims. They 
were poor, they were overworked, they were 
badly paid, their lives were altogether wretched. 
They got into their heads some wild idea that 
the People's Charter would give them better food 
and wages and lighter work if it were obtained, 
and that for that very reason the aristocrats and 
the officials would not grant it. 

The Reform Bill of 1S32 had done great things 
for the constitutional system of England. It 
abolished fifty-six nomination or rotten boroughs, 
and took away half the representation from thir- 
ty others ; it disposed of the seats thus obtained 
by giving sixty-five additional representatives to 
the counties, and conferred the right of returning 
members on Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, 
and some thirty-nine large and prosperous towns 
which had previously had no representation. 
The bill introduced a i'10 household qualifica- 
tion for boroughs, and extended the county fran- 
chise to leaseholders and copyholders. But it left 
the working-classes almost altogether out of the 
franchise. It broke down the monopoly which 
the aristocracy and landed classes had enjoyed, 
and admitted the middle classes to a share of the 
law-making power, but the working-class, in the 
opinion of many of their ablest and most influen- 
tial representatives, were not merely left out, but 
shouldered out. This was all the more exasper- 
ating, because the excitement and agitation by 
the strength of which the Reform Bill was carried 
in the teeth of so much resistance were kept up 
by uk>e working-men. Rightly or wrongly, they 
believed that their strength had been kept in re- 
serve to secure the carrying of the Reform Bill, 
and that when it was carried they were imme- 
diately thrown over by those whom they had 
thus helped to pass it. Therefore at the time 
when the young Sovereign ascended the throne 
the working-classes in all the large towns were 
in a state of profound disappointment and dis- 
content, almost, indeed, of disaffection. Chartism 
was beginning to succeed to the Reform agita- 
tion. 

Chartism may be said to have sprung defini- 
tively into existence in consequence of the for- 
mal declarations of the leaders of the Liberal 
party in Parliament that they did not intend to 
push Reform any farther. At the opening of the 
first Parliament of Queen Victoria's reign the 
question was brought to a test. A Radical mem- 
ber of the House of Commons moved as an 
amendment to the address a resolution declaring 
in favor of the ballot and of shorter duration of 
Parliaments. Only twenty members voted for 
it ; and Lord John Russell declared that to push 
Reform any farther then would be a breach of 
faith towards those who helped him to carry it. 
A great many outside Parliament not unnatural- 
ly regarded the refusal to go any farther as a 
breach of faith towards them on the part of the 
Liberal leaders. A conference was held almost 
immediately between a few of the Liberal mem- 
bers of Parliament who professed Radical opin- 
ions and some of the leaders of the working-men. 
At this conference the programme, or what was 
afterwards known as "the Charter," was agreed 
upon and drawn up. The name of Charter was 
given by Mr. O'Counell. 

Quietly studied now, the People's Charter does 
not seem a very formidable document. Its 
" points," as they were called, were six. Man- 
hood Suffrage came first. The second was An- 
nual Parliaments. Vote by Ballot was the third. 
Abolition of the Property Qualification (then 
and for many years after required for the election 
of a member to Parliament) was the fourth. 
The Payment of Members was the fifth ; and the 
Division of the Country into Equal Electoral 
Districts, the sixth of the famous points. Three 
of the points — half, that is to say, of the whole 
number — have already been made part of our 
constitutional system. The existing franchise 
may be virtually regarded as manhood suffrage. 



JlA 



IIORT 11ISTOKV OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



We have for years been voting by means of a 
written paper dropped in a ballot-box. The prop- 
erty qualification for members of Parliament 
could hardly be said to have been abolished. 
Such a word seems far too grand and dignified to 
describe the fate that befell it. We should rath- 
er say that it was extinguished by its own ab- 
surdity and viciousness. The proposal to divide 
the country into equal electoral districts is one 
Btrhich can hardly yet be regarded as having 
come to any test. But it is almost certain that 
sooner or later some alteration of our present 
system in that direction will be adopted. Of the 
two other points of the Charter, the payment of 
members may be regarded as decidedly objection- 
able ; and that for yearly Parliaments as embody- 
ing a proposition which would make public life 
an almost insufferable nuisance to those actively 
concerned in it. 

The Chartists might be roughly divided into 
three classes — the political Chartists, the social 
Chartists, and the Chartists of vague discontent, 
who joined the movement because they were 
wretched and felt angry. The first were the 
regular political agitators who wanted a wider 
popular representation ; the second were chiefly 
led to the movement by their hatred of the 
''bread-tax.'' These two classes were perfectly 
clear as to what they wanted : some of their de- 
mands were just and reasonable; none of them 
were without the sphere of rational and peaceful 
controversy. The disciples of mere discontent 
naturally swerved alternately to the side of those 
leaders or sections who talked loudest and fiercest 
against the law-makers and constituted authori- 
ties. Chartism soon split itself into two general ' 
divisions — the moral force and the physical force 
Chartism. A whole literature of Chartist news- 
papers sprang up to advocate the cause. The I 
Northern Star was the most popular and influ- 
ential of them; but every great town had its I 
Chartist press. Meetings were held at which j 
sometimes the most violent language was em- 
ployed. It. began to be the practice to hold torch- 
light meetings at night, and many men went 
armed to these, and open clamor was made by 
the wilder of the Chartists for an appeal to arms. \ 
A formidable riot took place in Birmingham, 
where the authorities endeavored to put down 
a Chartist meeting. The Government began to 
prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the 
Charter movement ; and some of these were 
convicted, imprisoned, and treated with great ' 
severity. 

AVide and almost universal discontent among 
the working -classes in town and country still 
helped to swell the Chartist ranks. The weav- I 
ers and stockingers in some of the manufacturing J 
towns were miserably poor. Wages were low 
everywhere. In the agricultural districts the 
complaints against the operation of the new 
Poor Law were vehement and passionate; and 
although they were unjust in principle and sus- 
tained by monstrous exaggerations of statement, 
they were not the less potent as recruiting agents 
for Chartism. There was a profound distrust 
of the middle class and their leaders. It is clear 
that at that time the Chartists, who represented 
the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large 
towns, did in their very hearts believe that Eng- 
land was ruled for the benefit of aristocrats and 
millionaires who were absolutely indifferent to 
the sufferings of the poor. It. is equally clear 
that most of what are called the ruling class 
did really believe the English working-men who 
joined the Chartist movement to be a race of 
fierce, unmanageable, and selfish communists, 
who, if they were allowed their own way for a 
moment, would prove themselves determined to 
overthrow throne, altar, and all established se- 
curities of society. An ignorant panic prevailed 
on both sides. 

The first foreign disturbance to the quiet and 
good promise of the new reign came from Can- 
ada. The condition of Canada was very pecu- 
liar. By an Act called the Constitution of 1701 
Canada was divided into two provinces, the 
Upper and the Lower. Each province had a 
separate system of government, consisting of a 
governor, an executive council appointed by the 
Crowo, and supposed in some way to resemble 



the Privy Council of this country; a legislative 
council, the members of which were appointed 
by the Crown for life ; and a Representative As- 
sembly, the members of which were elected for 
four years. At the same time the clergy re- 
serves were established by Parliament. One- 
• seventh of the waste lands of the colony was 
set aside for the maintenance of the Protestant 
! clergy, a fruitful source of disturbance and ill- 
feeling. Lower or Eastern Canada was inhab- 
ited for the most part by men of French descent, 
who still kept up in the midst of an active and 
moving civilization most of the principles and 
usages which belonged to mediaeval Fiance. 
, Lower Canada would have dozed away in its 
sleepy picturesqueness, held fast to its ancient 
ways, and allowed a bustling, giddy world, all 
alive with commerce and ambition, and desire 
for novelty, and the terribly disturbing thing 
which unresting people called progress, to rush 
on its wild path unheeded. But in the large 
towns there were active traders from England 
and other countries, who were by no means con- 
tent to put up with old-world ways, and to let 
the magnificent resources of the place run to 
waste. Upper Canada, on the other hand, was 
all new as to its population, and was full of the 
modern desire for commercial activity. Upper 
Canada was peopled almost exclusively by in- 
habitants from Great Britain. 

It is easy to see on tlje very face of things 
some of the difficulties which must arise in the 
development of such a system. The French of 
Lower Canada would regard with almost mor- 
bid jealousy any legislation which appeared like- 
ly to interfere with their ancient ways and to 
give any advantage or favor to the populations 
of British descent. The latter would see injus- 
tice or feebleness in every measure which did 
not assist them in developing their more ener- 
getic ideas. 

It was in Lower Canada that the greatest dif- 
ficulties arose. A constant antagonism grew up 
between the majority of the Representative As- 
sembly, who were elected by the population of 
the province. At last the Representative As- 
sembly refused to vote any farther supplies or to 
carry on any farther business. They formulated 
their grievances against the Home Government. 
Their complaints were of arbitrary conduct on 
the part of the governors ; intolerable composi- 
tion of the legislative council, which they insisted 
ought to he elective ; illegal appropriation of the 
public money ; and violent prorogation of the 
provincial Parliament. 

One of the leading men in the movement was 
Mr. Louis Joseph Papineau. This man had 
risen to high position by his talents, his energy, 
and his undoubtedly honorable character. He 
had represented Montreal in the Representative 
Assembly of Lower Canada, and he afterwards 
became Speaker of the House. He made him- 
self leader of the movement to protest against 
the policy of the governors, and that of the Gov- 
ernment at home by whom they were sustained. 
He held a series of meetings, at some of which 
undoubtedly rather strong language was used, 
and too frequent and significant appeals were 
made to the example held out to the population 
of Lower Canada by the successful revolt of the 
United States. Mr. Papineau also planned the 
calling together of a great convention to discuss 
and proclaim the grievances of the colonies. 
Lord Gosford, the governor, began by dismissing 
several militia officers who had taken part in 
some of these demonstrations. Mr. Papineau 
himself was an officer of this force. Then the 
governor issued warrants for the apprehension 
of many members of the popular Assembly on 
the charge of high-treason. Some of these at 
once left the country ; others against whom 
warrants were issued were arrested, and a sud- 
den resistance was made by their friends and 
supporters. Then, in the manner familiar to all 
who have read anything of the history of revolu- 
tionary movements, the resistance to a capture 
of prisoners suddenly transformed itself into open 
rebellion. 

The rebellion was not, in a military sense, a 
very great thing. At its first outbreak the mil- 
itary authorities were for a moment surprised, 



and the rebels obtained one or two trifling ad- 
vantages. But the commander-in-chief at onca 
showed energy adequate to the occasion, and 
used, as it was his duty to do, a strong hand in 
putting the movement down. The rebels fought 
with something like desperation in one or two 
instances, and there was, it must be said, a good 
deal of blood shed. The disturbance, however, 
after a while extended to the upper province. 
Upper Canada too had its complaints against 
its governors and the Home Government. 

The news of the outbreaks in Canada created 
a natural excitement in this country. There 
was a very strong feeling of sympathy among 
many classes here — not, indeed, with the rebel- 
lion, but with the colony which complained of 
what seemed to be genuine and serious griev- 
ances. Public meetings were held at which re- 
solutions were passed ascribing the disturbances 
in the first place to the refusal by the Govern- 
ment of any redress sought for by the colonists. 
Lord John Russell on the part of the Govern- 
ment introduced a bill to deal with the rebellious 
province. The bill proposed i>. brief to suspend 
for a time the constitution of Lower Canada, and 
to send out from this country a governor-general 
and high commissioner, with full powers to deal 
with the rebellion, and to remodel the constitu- 
tion of both provinces. There was an almost 
universal admission that the Government had 
found the right man when Lord John Russell 
mentioned the name of Lord Durham. 

Lord Durham was a man of remarkable char- 
acter. He belonged to one of the oldest families 
in England. The Lambtons had lived on their 
estate in the north, in uninterrupted succession, 
since the Conquest. The male succession, it is 
stated, never was interrupted since the twelfth 
century. They were not, however, a family of 
aristocrats. Their wealth was derived chiefly 
from coal-mines, and grew up in later days ; the 
property at first, and for a long time, was of in- 
considerable value. Lord Durham was born at 
Lambton Castle, in April, 1792. Before he was 
quite twenty years of age he made a romantic 
marriage at Gretna Green with a lady who died 
three years after. About a year after the death 
of his first wife he married the eldest daughter 
of Lord Grey. He was then only twenty-four 
years of age. He had before this been returned 
to Parliament for the county of Durham, and he 
soon distinguished himself as a very advanced 
and energetic reformer. While in the Commons 
he seldom addressed the House, but when he 
did speak it was in support of some measure of 
reform, or against what he conceived to be anti- 
quated and illiberal legislation. He brought out 
a plan of his own for Parliamentary reform in 
1821. In 1828 he was raised to the peerage 
with the title of Baron Durham. When the 
Ministry of Lord Grey was formed, in November, 
1830, Lord Durham became Lord Privy Seal. 
He is said to have had an almost complete con- 
trol over Lord Grey. He had an impassioned 
and energetic nature, which sometimes drove 
him into outbreaks of feeling which most of his 
colleagues dreaded. He was thorough in his 
reforming purposes, and would have rushed at 
radical changes with scanty consideration for 
the time or for the temper of his opponents. lie 
had very little reverence, indeed, for the majesty 
of custom. Whatever he wished he strongly 
wished. He had no idea of reticence, and cared 
not much for the decorum of office. lie was 
one of the men who, even when they are thor- 
oughly in the right, have often the unhappy art 
of seeming to put, themselves completely in the 
wrong. None of his opponents, however, denied 
his great ability. He was never deterred by con- 
ventional beliefs and habits from looking boldly 
into the very heart of a great political difficulty. 
He was never afraid to propose what in times 
later than his have been called heroic remedies. 
There was a general impression, perhaps even 
among those who liked him least, that he was a 
sort of "unemployed Caesar," a man who only 
required a field large enough to develop great 
qualities in the ruling of men. The difficulties 
in Canada seemed to have come as if expressly 
to give him an opportunity of proving himself 
all that his friends declared him to be, or of 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



justifying forever the distrust of his enemies. 
He went out to Canada with the assurance of 
every one that his expedition would either make 
or mar a career, if not a country. Lord Dur- 
ham found out a new alternative. He made a 
country and he marred a career. The mission 
of Lord Durham saved Canada. It ruined Lord 
Durham. 

Lord Durham arrived in Quebec at the end of 
May, 1838. He at once issued a proclamation, 
in style like that of a dictator. It was not in 
any way unworthy of the occasion, which espe- 
cially called for the intervention of a brave and 
enlightened dictatorship. He declared that he 
would unsparingly punish any who violated the 
laws, but he frankly invited the co-operation of 
the colonies to form a new system of government 
really suited to their wants and to the altering 
conditions of civilization. Unfortunately, he had 
hardly entered on his work of dictatorship when 
he found that he was no longer a dictator. In 
the passing of the Canada Bill through Parlia- 
ment the powers which he understood were to 
be conferred upon him had been considerably 
reduced. Lord Durham went to work, however, 
as if he were still invested with absolute author- 
ity over all the laws and conditions of the colony. 
A very CsesaHaying down the lines for the future 
government of a province could hardly have been 
more boldly arbitrary. Let it be said also that 
Lord Durham's arbitrariness was for the most 
part healthy in effect and just in spirit. But it 
gave an immense opportunity of attack on him- 
self and on the Government to the enemies of 
both at home. Lord Durham had hardly begun 
his work of reconstruction when his recall was 
clamored for by vehement voices in Parliament. 

Lord Durham did not wait for the formal re- 
call. He returned to England a disgraced man. 
Yet even then there was public spirit enough 
among the English people to refuse to ratify any 
sentence of disgrace upon him. When he landed 
at Plymouth he was received with acclamations 
by the population, although the Government had 
prevented any of the official honor usually shown 
to returning governors from being offered to 
him. 

Lord Durham's report was acknowledged by 
enemies as well as by the most impartial critics 
to be a masterly document. It laid the founda- 
tion of the political success and social prosperity 
not only of Canada but of all the other important 
colonies. After having explained in the most 
exhaustive manner the causes of discontent and 
backwardness in Canada, it went on to recom- 
mend that the government of the colony should 
be put as much as possible into the hands of the 
colonists themselves, that they themselves should 
execute as well as make the laws, the limit of the 
Imperial Government's interference being in such 
matters as affect the relations of the colony with 
the mother country, such as the constitution and 
form of government, the regulation of foreign 
relations and trade, and the disposal of the pub- 
lic lands. Lord Durham proposed to establish 
a thoroughly good system of municipal institu- 
tions ; to secure the independence of the judges ; 
to make all provincial officers, except the gover- 
nor and his secretary, responsible to the Colonial 
Legislature ; and to repeal all former legislation 
with respect to the reserves of land for the clergy. 
Finally, he proposed that the provinces of Can- 
ada should be reunited politically and should be- 
come one legislature, containing the representa- 
tives of both races and of all districts. It is 
significant that the report also recommended 
that in any Act to be introduced for this pur- 
pose a provision should be made by which all 
or any of the other North American colonies 
should, on the application of their legislatures, 
and with the consent of Canada, be admitted 
into the Canadian Union. In brief, Lord Dur- 
ham proposed to make the Canadas self-govern- 
ing as regards their internal affairs, and the germ 
of a federal union. 

It is not necessary to describe in detail the 
steps by which the Government gradually in- 
troduced the recommendations of Lord Durham 
to Parliament and carried them to success. In 
1840, however, the Act was passed which re- 
united Upper and Lower Canada on the basis 



proposed by Lord Durham. Lord Durham did 
not live to see the success of the policy he had 
recommended. Within a few days after the 
passing of the Canada Government Bill he died 
at Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, on July 28, 1840. 
He was then little more than forty-eight years 
of age. He had for some time been in failing 
health, and it cannot be doubted that the morti- 
fication attending his Canadian mission had worn 
away his strength. His proud and sensitive 
spirit could ill bear the contradictions and hu- 
miliations that had been forced upon him. He 
wanted to the success of his political career that 
proud patience which the gods are said to love, 
and by virtue of which great men live down mis- 
appreciation, and hold out until they see them- 
selves justified and hear the reproaches turn into 
cheers. But if Lord Durham's personal career 
was in any way a failure, his policy for the 
Canadas was a splendid success. It established 
the principles of colonial government. There 
were defects in the construction of Lord Dur- 
ham's scheme, but the success of his policy lay 
in the broad principles it laid down, and to 
which other colonial systems as well as that of 
the Dominion of Canada owe their strength and 
security to-day. One may say, with little help 
from the merely fanciful, that the rejoicings of 
emancipated colonies might have been in his dy- 
ing ears as he sank into his early grave. 

The Opium dispute with China was going on 
when the Queen came to the throne. The 
Opium War broke out soon after. Reduced to 
plain words, the principle for which we fought in 
the China War was the right of Great Britain 
to force a peculiar trade upon a foreign people 
in spite of the protestations of the Government 
and all such public opinion as there was of the 
nation. 

The whole principle of Chinese civilization, at 
the time when the Opium War broke out, was 
based on conditions which to any modern nation 
must seem erroneous and unreasonable. The 
Chinese Governments and people desired to have 
no political relations or dealings whatever with 
an}' other State. They were not so obstinately 
set against private and commercial dealings, but 
they would have no political intercourse with 
foreigners, and they would not even recognize 
the existence of foreign peoples as States. They 
were perfectly satisfied with themselves and their 
own systems. The one thing which China asked 
of Eui'opean civilization and the movement called 
Modern Progress was to be let alone. The 
Chinese would much rather have lived without 
ever seeing the face of a foreigner. But they 
had put up with the private intrusion of foreign- 
ers and trade, and had had dealings with Ameri- 
can traders and with the East India Company. 
The charter and the exclusive rights of the East 
India Company expired in April, 1834 ; the chart- 
er was renewed under different conditions, and 
the trade with China was thrown open. One of 
the great branches of the East India Company's 
business with China was the opium trade. When 
the trading privileges ceased this traffic was taken 
up briskly by private merchants, who bought of 
the Company the opium which they grew in India 
and sold it to the Chinese. The Chinese Govern- 
ments, and all teachers, moralists, and persons 
of education in China, had lor.g desired to get 
rid of or put down this trade in opium. They 
considered it highly detrimental to the morals, 
the health, and the prosperity of the people. 
All traffic in opium was strictly forbidden by 
the Governments and laws of China. Yet our 
English traders carried on a brisk and profitable 
trade in the forbidden article. Nor was this 
merely an ordinary smuggling, or a business 
akin to that of the blockade-running during the 
American civil war. The arrangements with 
the Chinese Government allowed the existence 
of all establishments and machinery for carrying 
on a general trade at Canton and Macao ; and 
under cover of these arrangements the opium 
traders set up their regular head -quarters in 
these towns. 

The English Government appointed superin- 
tendents to manage our commercial dealings 
with China. Misunderstandings occurred at 
every new step of negotiation. These misun- 



derstandings were natural. Our people knew 
hardly anything about the Chinese. The limita- 
tion of our means of communication with them 
made this ignorance inevitable, but certainly did 
not excuse our acting as if we were in possession 
of the fullest and most accurate information. 

The Chinese believed from the first that the 
superintendents were there merely to protect the 
opium trade, and to force on China political re- 
lations with the West. Practically this was the 
effect of their presence. The superintendents took 
no steps to aid the Chinese authorities in stopping 
the hated trade. The British traders naturally 
enough thought that the British Government were 
determined to protect them in carrying it on. At 
length the English Government announced that 
"her Majesty's Government could not inter- 
fere for the purpose of enabling British subjects 
to violate the laws of the country with which they 
trade;" and that "any loss, therefore, which such 
persons may suffer in consequence of the more 
effectual execution of the Chinese laws on this 
subject must be borne by the parties who have 
brought that loss on themselves by their own 
acts." This very wise and proper resolve came, 
however, too late. The British traders had 
been allowed to go on for a long time under the 
full conviction that the protection of the English 
Government was behind them and wholly at 
their service. 

When the Chinese authorities actually pro- 
ceeded to insist on the forfeiture of an immense 
quantity of opium in the hand of British traders, 
and took other harsh but certainly not unnatu- 
ral measures to extinguish the traffic, Captain 
Elliott, the chief superintendent, sent to the Gov- 
ernor of India a request for as many ships of 
war as could be spared for the protection of the 
life and property of Englishmen in China. Be- 
fore long British ships arrived, and the two 
countries were at war. 

It was easy work enough so far as England 
was concerned. It was on our side nothing but 
a succession of cheap victories. The Chinese 
fought very bravely in a great many instances ; 
and they showed still more often a Spartan-like 
resolve not to survive defeat. When one of the 
Chinese cities was taken by Sir Hugh Gough, the 
Tartar general went into his house as soon as he 
saw that all was lost, made his servants set fire 
to the building, and calmly sat in his chair until 
he was burned to death. We quickly captured 
the island of Chusan, on the east coast of China ; 
a part of our squadron went up the Peiho river to 
threaten the capital ; negotiations were opened, 
and the preliminaries of a treaty were made out, 
to which, however, neither the English Govern- 
ment nor the Chinese would agree, and the war 
was reopened. Chusan was again taken by us; 
Ningpo, a large city a few miles in on the main- 
land, fell into our hands ; Amoy, farther south, 
was captured ; our troops were before Nankin, 
when the Chinese Government at last saw how 
futile was the idea of resisting our arms. They 
made peace at last on any terms we chose to ask. 
We asked, in the first instance, the cession in per- 
petuity to us of the island of Hong-Kong. Of 
course we got it. Then we asked that five ports, 
Canton, Amoy, Foo-Chow-Foo, Ningpo, and 
Shanghai, should be thrown open to British trad- 
ers, and that consuls should be established there. 
Needless to say that this too was conceded. 
Then it was agreed that the indemnity already 
mentioned should be paid by the Chinese Gov- 
ernment — some four millions and a half ster- 
ling, in addition to one million and a quarter as 
compensation for the destroyed opium. The 
Chinese war then was over for the time. But as 
the children say that snow brings more snow, so 
did that war with China bring other wars to fol- 
low it. 

The Melbourne Ministry kept going from bad 
to worse. There was a great Stirling in the coun- 
try all around them, which made their feebleness 
the more conspicuous. Indeed, the history of 
that time seems full of Reform projects. The 
Parliamentary annals contain the names of vari- 
ous measures of social and political imp ovement 
which might in themselves, it would seem, bear 
witness to the most unsleeping activity on the 
part of any Ministry. The appointment of the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



9 



Committee of Council to deal with the elementa- 
ry education of the poor ; measures for general 
registration ; for the reduction of the stamp duty 
on newspapers, and of the duty on paper ; for the 
improvement of the jail system; for the spread 
of vaccination ; for the regulation of the labor 
of children ; for the prohibition of the employ- 
ment of any child or young person under twenty- 
one in the cleaning of chimneys by climbing; 
for the suppression of the punishment of the pil- 
lory ; efforts to relieve the Jews from civil disa- 
bilities — these are but a few of the many projects 
of social and political reform that occupied the 
attention of that busy period, which somehow ap- 
pears nevertheless to have been so sleepy and do- 
nothing. How does it come about that we can 
regard the Ministry in whose time all these 
things were done or attempted as exhausted and 
worthless ? 

One answer is plain. The reforming energy 
was in the time, and not in the Ministry. There 
was a just anil general conviction that if the Gov- 
ernment were left to themselves they would do 
nothing. Whatever they undertook they seemed 
to undertake reluctantly, and as if only with the 
object of preventing other people from having 
anything to do with it. Naturally, therefore, 
they got little or no thanks for any good they 
might have done. When they brought in a 
measure to abolish in various cases the punish- 
ment of death, they fell so far behind public opin- 
ion and the inclinations of the Commission that 
had for eight years been inquiring into the state 
of our criminal law, that their bill only passed by 
very narrow majorities, and impressed many ar- 
dent reformers as if it were meant rather to with- 
hold than to advance a genuine reform. In truth, 
it was a period of enthusiasm and of growth, 
and the Ministry did not understand this. Lord 
Melbourne had apparently got into his mind the 
conviction that the only sensible thing the peo- 
ple of England could do was to keep up the Mel- 
bourne Ministry, and that being a sensible peo- 
ple they would naturally do this. He had grown 
into something like the condition of a pampered 
old hall-porter, who, dozing in his chair, begins 
to look on it as an act of rudeness if any visitor 
to his master presumes to knock at the door, and 
so disturb him from his comfortable rest. 

The operations which took place about this 
time in Syria had an important bearing on the 
relations between this country and France. Mo- 
hammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, the most powerful 
of all the Sultan's feudatories, had made himself 
for a time master of Syria. By the aid of his 
adopted son, Ibrahim Pasha, he had defeated the 
armies of the Porte wherever he had encountered 
them. Mohammed's victories had for the time 
compelled the Porte to allow him to remain in 
power in Syria; but in 1839 the Sultan again 
declared war against Mohammed Ali. Ibrahim 
Pasha again obtained an overwhelming victory 
over the Turkish army. The energetic Sultan 
Mahmoud died suddenly ; and immediately after 
his death the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High 
Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, went over to the 
Egyptians with all his vessels; an act of almost 
unexampled treachery even in the history of the 
Ottoman Empire. It was evident that Turkey 
was not able to hold her own against the formid- 
able Mohammed and his successful son ; and the 
policy of the Western Powers of Europe, and of 
England especially, had long been to maintain 
the Ottoman Empire, as a necessary part of the 
common State system. The policy of Russia 
was to keep up that empire as long as it suited 
her own purposes ; to take care that no other 
Power got anything out of Turkey ; and to pre- 
pare the way for such a partition of the spoils 
of Turkey as would satisfy Russian interests. 
Russia, therefore, was to be found now defend- 
ing Turkey, and now assailing her. The course 
taken by Russia was seemingly inconsistent ; but 
it was only inconsistent as the course of a sailing 
ship may be which now tacks to this side and 
now to that, but has a clear object in view and 
a port to reach all the while. England was then 
and for a long time after steadily bent on pre- 
serving the Turkish Empire, and in a great meas- 
ure as a rampart against the schemes and am- 
bitions imputed to Russia herself. Fiance was 



less firmly set on the maintenance of Turkey ; 
and France, moreover, had got into her mind 
that England had designs of her own on Egypt. 
Austria was disposed to go generally with Eng- 
land; Prussia was little more than a nominal 
sharer in the alliance that was now patched up. 
It is evident that such an alliance could not be very 
harmonious or direct in its action. It was, how- 
ever, effective enough to prove too strong for the 
Pasha of Egypt. A fleet made up of English, 
Austrian, and Turkish vessels bombarded Acre; 
an allied army drove the Egyptians from several 
of their strongholds. Ibrahim Pasha, with all 
his courage and genius, was not equal to the 
odds against which he now saw himself forced 
to contend. He had to succumb. Mohammed 
Ali was deprived of all his Asiatic possessions ; 
but was secured in his government of Egypt by 
a convention signed at London on July 15, 1840, 
by the representatives of Great Britain, Austria, 
Prussia, and Russia, on the one part, and of the 
Ottoman Porte on the other. The name of 
France was not found there. France had drawn 
hack from the alliance, and for some time seemed 
as if she were likely to take arms against it. M. 
Thiers was then her Prime-minister: he was a 
man of quick fancy, restless and ambitious tem- 
perament. Thiers persuaded himself and the 
great majority of his countrymen that England 
was bent upon driving Mohammed Ali out of 
Egypt as well as out of Syria, and that her ob- 
ject was to obtain possession of Egypt for her- 
self. For some months it seemed as if war were 
inevitable between England and France. Fort- 
unately, the French King, Louis Philippe, and 
the eminent statesman, M. Guizot, were both 
strongly in favor of peace. M. Thiers resigned ; 
M. Guizot became Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
and virtually head of the Government; and on 
July 13, 1841, the Treaty of London was signed, 
which provided for the settlement of the affairs 
of Egypt on the basis of the arrangement already 
made, and which contained, moreover, a stipula- 
tion by which the Sultan declared himself firmly 
resolved to maintain the ancient principle of his 
empire — that no foreign ship of war was to be 
admitted into the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, 
with the exception of light vessels for which a 
firman was granted. 

Steadily meanwhile did the Ministry go from 
bad to worse. They were remarkably bad ad- 
ministrators ; their finances were wretchedly man- 
aged. The budget of the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, Mr. Baring, showed a deficiency of near- 
ly two millions. This deficiency he proposed to 
meet in part by alteration in the sugar duties; 
but the House of Commons, after a long debate, 
rejected his proposals by a majority of thirty-six. 
It was then expected, of course, that ministers 
would resign ; but they were not yet willing to 
accept the consequences of defeat. People be- 
gan to ask, "Will nothing, then, turn them out 
of office? Will they never have done with try- 
ing new tricks to keep in place ?'' 

Sir Robert Peel took, in homely phrase, the 
bull by the horns. He proposed a direct vote 
of want of confidence — a resolution declaring 
that ministers did not possess the confidence of 
the House sufficiently to enable them to carry 
through the measures which they deemed of 
essential importance to the public welfare, and 
that their continuance in office under such cir- 
cumstances was at variance with the spirit of 
the Constitution. On June 4, 1841, the division 
was taken ; and the vote of no-confidence was 
carried by a majority of one. Even the Whigs 
could not stand this. Parliament was dissolved, 
and the result of the general election was that 
the Tories were found to have a majority even 
greater than they themselves had anticipated. 
The moment the new Parliament was assembled 
amendments to the address were carried in botli 
Houses in a sense hostile to the Government. 
Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had to re- 
sign, and Sir Robert Peel was intrusted with the 
task of forming an administration. 

We have no more to do with Lord Melbourne 
in this history. He merely drops out of it. Be- 
tween his expulsion from office and his death, 
which took place in 1848, he did little or noth- 
ing to call for the notice of any one. It was said 



at one time that his closing years were lonesome 
and melancholy ; but this has lately been denied, 
and indeed it is not likely that one who had such 
a genial temper and so many friends could have 
been left to the dreariness of a not self-sufficing 
solitude and to the bitterness of neglect. He 
was a generous and kindly man ; his personal 
character, although often assailed, was free of 
any serious reproach ; he was a failure in office, 
not so much from want of ability, as because he 
was a politician without convictions. 

The Peel Ministry came into power with great 
hopes. It had Lord Lyndhurst for Lord Chan- 
cellor ; Sir James Graham for Home Secretary ; 
Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office; Lord 
Stanley was Colonial Secretary. The most re- 
markable man not in the Cabinet, soon to be one 
of the foremost statesmen in the country, was 
Mr. W. E. Gladstone. It is a fact of some signifi- 
cance in the history of the Peel administration 
that the elections which brought the new Minis- 
try into power brought Mr. Cobden for the first 
time into the House of Commons. 

While Lord Melbourne and his Whig col- 
leagues, still in office, were fribbling away their 
popularity on the pleasant assumption that no- 
body was particularly in earnest about anything, 
the Vice-chancellor and heads of houses held :t 
meeting at Oxford, and passed a censure on the 
celebrated " No. 90 " of " Tracts for the Times." 
The author of the tract was Dr. John Henry 
Newman, and the principal ground for its cen- 
sure by voices claiming authority was the prin- 
ciple it seemed to put forward — that a man might 
honestly subscribe all the articles and formula- 
ries of the English Church, while yet holding 
many of the doctrines of the Church of Rome, 
against which those articles were regarded as a 
necessary protest. The great movement which 
was thus brought into sudden question and pub- 
licity sprang from the desire to revive the author- 
ity of the Church ; to quicken her with a new 
vitality; to give her once again that place as 
guide and inspirer of the national life which her 
ardent votaries believed to be hers by right, and 
to have been forfeited only by the carelessness 
of her authorities and their failure to fulfil the 
duties of her Heaven-assigned mission. 

No movement could have had a purer source. 
None could have had more disinterested and 
high-minded promoters. It was borne in upon 
some earnest, unresting souls, like that of the 
sweet and saintly Keble, that the Church of 
England had higher duties and nobler claims 
than the business of preaching harmless sermons 
and the power of enriching bishops. Keble 
urged on some of the more vigorous and thought- 
ful minds around him, by his influence and his 
example, that they should reclaim for the Church 
the place which ought to be hers, as the true 
successor of the Apostles. Among those wdio 
shared the spirit and purpose of Keble were 
Richard Hurrell Froude, the historian's elder 
brother, who gave rich promise of a splendid 
career, but wdio died while still in comparative 
youth ; Dr. Pusey, afterwards leader of the school 
of ecclesiasticism which bears his name ; and, 
most eminent of all, Dr. Newman. Newman 
had started the publication of a series of treatises 
called "Tracts for the Times," to vindicate the 
real mission of the Church of England, and 
wrote the most remarkable of them. This was 
the Tractarian movement, which had such vari- 
ous and memorable results. Newman had up 
to this time been distinguished as one of the 
most unsparing enemies of Rome. He had 
never had any manner of association with Roman 
Catholics ; had, in fact, known singularly little 
of them. At this time the idea of leaving the 
Church never, Dr. Newman himself assures us, 
had crossed his imagination. 

The abilities of Dr. Newman were hardly sur- 
passed by any contemporary in any department 
of thought. His position and influence in Ox- 
ford were almost unique. There was in his in- 
tellectual temperament a curious combination of 
the mystic and the logical. England in our time 
has hardly had a greater master of argument and 
of English prose than Newman. He is one of 
the keenest of dialecticians. His words dispel 
mists ; and whether they who listen agree or not, 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



they cannot fail to understand. A penetrating, 
poignant, satirical humor is found in most of his 
writings ; an irony sometimes piercing suddenly 
through it like a darting pain. On the other 
hand, a generous vein of poetry and of pathos 
informs his style; and there are many passages 
of his works in which he rises to the height of a 
genuine and noble eloquence. 

In all the arts that make a great preacher or 
orator Newman was strikingly deficient. His 
manner was constrained, ungraceful, and even 
awkward ; his voice was thin and weak. His 
bearing was not at first impressive in any way. 
A gaunt, emaciated figure, a sharp and eagle 
face, a cold, meditative eye, rather repelled than 
attracted those who saw him for the first time. 
Singularly devoid of affectation, Newman did 
not always conceal his intellectual scorn of men 
who made loud pretence with inferior gifts, and 
the men must have been few indeed whose gifts 
were not inferior to his. Newman had no scorn 
for intellectual inferiority iu itself; he despised 
it only when it gave itself airs. His influence 
while he was the vicar of St. Mary's at Oxford 
was profound. No opponent ever spoke of New- 
man but with admiration for his intellect and 
respect for his character. Dr. Newman had a 
younger brother, Francis W. Newman, who also 
possessed remarkable ability and earnestness. 
He too was distinguished at Oxford, and seemed 
to have a great career there before him. But he 
was drawn one way by the wave of thought be- 
fore his more famous brother had been drawn 
the other way. In 1830 the younger Newman 
found himself prevented by religious scruples 
from subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles for his 
master's degree. He left the university, and 
wandered for years in the East, endeavoring, not 
very successfully, perhaps, to teach Christianity 
on its broadest base to Mahometans ; and then 
he came back to England, to take his place 
among the leaders of a certain school of free 
thought. 

When Dr. Newman wrote the famous Tract 
"No. 90," for which he was censured, he bowed 
to the authority of his bishop. But he did not 
admit any change of opinion; and indeed soon 
after the gradual working of Newman's mind 
became evident to all the world. The brightest 
and most penetrating intellect in the Church of 
England was withdrawn from her service, and 
Newman went over to the Church of Rome. To 
this result had the inquiry conducted him which 
had led his friend Dr. Pusey merely to endeavor 
to incorporate some of the mysticism and the 
symbols of Rome with the ritual of the English 
Protestant Church ; which had brought Keble 
only to seek a more liberal and truly Christian 
temper for the faith of the Protestant; and 
which had sent Francis Newman into Radical- 
ism and Rationalism. 

Still greater was the practical importance, at 
least in defined results, of the movement which 
went on in Scotland about the same time. 

The case was briefly this. During the reign 
of Queen Anne an Act was passed which took 
from the Church courts in Scotland the free 
choice as to the appointment of pastors by sub- 
jecting the power of the presbytery to the con- 
trol and interference of the law courts. In an 
immense number of Scotch parishes the minister 
was nominated by a lay patron ; and if the pres- 
bytery found nothing to condemn in him as to 
"life, literature, and doctrine," they were com- 
pelled to appoint him, however unwelcome he 
might be to the parishioners. Now, it is obvious 
that a man might have a blameless character, 
sound religious views, and an excellent education, 
and nevertheless be totally unfitted to undertake 
the charge of a Scottish parish. The effect of 
the power conferred on the law courts and the 
patron was simply in a great number of cases to 
send families away from the Church of Scotland 
and into voluntaryism. 

Dr. Chalmers became the leader of the move- 
ment which was destined within two years from 
the time we are now surveying to cause the dis- 
ruption of the ancient Kirk of Scotland. No 
man could be better fitted for the task of leader- 
ship in such a movement. He was beyond com- 
parison the foremost man iu the Scottish Church. 



He was the greatest pulpit orator in Scotland, 
or, indeed, in Great Britain. As a writer on 
political economy he bad made a distinct mark. 
From having been in his earlier days the minis- 
ter of an obscure Scottish village congregation 
he had suddenly sprung into fame. He was the 
lion of any city which he happened to visit. If 
he preached in London, the church was crowded 
with the leaders of politics, science, and fashion, 
eager to hear him. Chalmers spoke with a mas- 
sive eloquence in keeping with his powerful frame 
and his broad brow and his commanding pres- 
ence. His speeches were a strenuous blending 
of argument and emotion. They appealed at 
once to the strong common - sense and to the 
deep religious convictions of his Scottish audi- 
ences. His whole soul was in his wqrk as a 
leader of religious movements. He cared little 
or nothing for any popularity or fame that he 
might have won. The Free Church of Scotland 
is his monument. He did not make that Church. 
It was not the work of one man, or, strictly speak- 
ing, of one generation. It grew naturally out of 
the inevitable struggle between Church and State. 
But Chalmers did more than any other man to 
decide the moment and the manner of its com- 
ing into existence, and its success is his best 
monument. 

On May 18, 1S43, some five hundred ministers 
of the Church of Scotland, under the leadership 
of Dr. Chalmers, seceded from the old Kirk and 
set about to form the Free .Church. The Gov- 
ernment of Sir Robert Peel had made a weak 
effort at compromise by legislative enactment, 
but had declined to introduce any legislation 
which should free the Kirk of Scotland from the 
control of the civil courts, and there was no 
course for those who held the views of Dr. Chal- 
mers but to withdraw from the Church which 
admitted that claim of State control. The his- 
tory of Scotland is illustrated by many great 
national deeds. No deed it tells of surpasses in 
dignity and in moral grandeur that secession — 
to cite the words of the protest — "from an Es- 
tablishment which we loved and prised, through 
interference with conscience, the dishonor done 
to Christ's crown, and the rejection of his sole 
and supreme authority as King in his Church." 

CHAPTER HI. 



Meanwhile, things were looking ill with the 
Melbourne Ministry. The Jamaica Bill put 
them in great perplexity. This was a measure 
brought in on April 9, 1839, to make temporary 
provision for the government of the island of 
Jamaica, by setting aside the House of Assem- 
bly for five years, and during that time empow- 
ering the governor and council, with three salaried 
commissioners, to manage the affairs of the col- 
ony. In other words, the Melbourne Ministry 
proposed to suspend for five years the constitu- 
tion of Jamaica. No body of persons can be 
more awkwardly placed than a Whig Ministry 
proposing to set aside a constitutional govern- 
ment anywhere. Such a proposal may be a nec- 
essary measure ; it may be unavoidable ; but it 
always comes with a bad grace from Whigs or 
Liberals, and gives their enemies a handle against 
them which they cannot fail to use to some pur- 
pose. 

In the case of the Jamaica Bill there was 
some excuse for the harsh policy. After the 
abolition of slavery the former masters in the 
island found it very hard to reconcile themselves 
to the new condition of things. They could not 
all at once understand that their former slaves 
were to be their equals before the law. On the 
other hand, some of the Jamaica negroes were 
too ignorant to understand that they had ac- 
quired any rights; others were a little too clam- 
orous in their assertion. The Imperial govern- 
ors and officials were generally and justly eager 
to protect the negroes, and the result was a con- 
stant quarrel between the Jamaica House of 
Assembly and the representatives of the Home 
Government. A bill, very necessary in itself, 
was passed by the Imperial Parliament for the 
better regulation of prisons in Jamaica, and the 



House of Assembly refused to submit to any such 
legislation. Under these circumstances the .Mel- 
bourne Ministry proposed the suspension of the 
constitution of the island. The measure was 
opposed not only by Peel and the Conservatives, 
but by many Radicals. The Ministry only had 
a majority of five in favor of their measure. 
This, of course, was a virtual defeat. The Min- 
istry acknowledged it and resigned. Their de- 
feat was a humiliation ; their resignation an 
inevitable submission ; but they came back to 
office almost immediately under conditions that 
made the humiliation more humbling, and ren- 
dered their subsequent career more difficult by far 
than their past struggle for existence had been. 

The famous controversy known as the "Bed- 
chamber Question " made a way back for the 
Whigs into place. Gulliver ought to have had 
an opportunity of telling such a story to the 
king of the Brobdingnagians, in order the better 
to impress him with a clear idea of the logical 
beauty of constitutional government. When 
Lord Melbourne resigned the Queen sent for 
Peel, and told him, with a simple and girlish 
frankness, that she was sorry to have to part 
with her late ministers, of whose conduct she 
entirely approved, but that she bowed to consti- 
tutional usage. This must have been rather an 
astonishing beginning to the grave and formal 
Peel ; but he was not a man to think any worse 
of the candid young Sovereign for her outspoken 
ways. The negotiations went on very smoothly 
as to the colleagues Peel meant to recommend 
to her Majesty, until he happened to notice the 
composition of the royal household as regarded 
the ladies most closely in attendance on the 
Queen. For example, he found that the wife 
of Lord Normanby and the sister of Lord Mor- 
peth were the two ladies in closest attendance 
on her Majesty. Now, it has to be borne in 
mind — it was proclaimed again and again dur- 
ing the negotiations — that the chief difficulty 
of the Conservatives would necessarily be in 
Ireland, where their policy would be altogether 
opposed to that of the Whigs. Lord Normanby 
had been Lord-lieutenant of Ireland under the 
Whigs, and Lord Morpeth, the amiable and 
accomplished Lord Carlisle of later time, Irish 
Secretary. It certainly cotdd not be satisfactory 
for Peel to try to work a new Irish policy while 
the closest household companions of the Queen 
were the wife and sister of the displaced states- 
men who directly represented the policy he had 
to supersede. Had this point of view been 
made clear to the Sovereign at first, it is hard- 
ly possible that any serious difficulty could 
have arisen. The Queen must have seen the 
obvious reasonableness of Peel's request; nor 
is it to be supposed that the two ladies in ques- 
tion could have desired to hold their places un- 
der such circumstances. But unluckily some 
misunderstanding took place at the very begin- 
ning of the conversations on ibis point. Peel 
only desired to press for the retirement of the 
ladies holding the higher offices ; be did not 
intend to ask for any change affecting a place 
lower in official rank than that of lady of the 
bedchamber. But somehow or other he con- 
veyed to the mind of the Queen a different idea. 
She thought he meant to insist, as a matter of 
principle, upon the removal of all her familiar 
attendants and household associates. Under this 
impression she consulted Lord John Russell, 
who advised her on what he understood to be 
the state of the facts. On his advice the Queen 
stated in reply that she could not " consent to a 
course which she conceives to be contrary to 
usage and is repugnant to her feelings." Sir 
Robert Peel held firm to his stipulation, and 
the chance of his then forming a Ministry was 
at an end. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues 
had to be recalled ; and at a Cabinet meeting 
they adopted a minute declaring it reasonable 
" that the great, offices of the Court and situa- 
tions in the household held by members of Par- 
liament should be included in the political ar- 
rangements made on a change in the adminis- 
tration ; but they are not of opinion that a sim- 
ilar principle should be applied or extended to 
the offices held by ladies in her Majesty's house- 
hold." 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



II 



In the country the incident created great ex- 
citement. Some Liberals bluntly insisted that it 
was not right in such a matter to consult the 
feelings of the Sovereign at all, and that the ad- 
vice of the minister, and his idea of what was 
for the good of the country, ought alone to be 
considered. Nothing could be more undesirable 
than the position in which Lord Melbourne and 
his colleagnes had allowed the Sovereign to place 
herself. The more people in general came to 
think over the matter, the more clearly it. was 
seen that Peel was in the right, although he had 
not made himself understood at first, and had, 
perhaps, not shown all through enough of con- 
sideration for the novelty of the young Sover- 
eign's position. But no one could deliberately 
maintain the position at first taken up by the 
Whigs ; and in point of fact they were soon glad 
to drop it as quickly and quietly as possible. 
The whole question, it may be said at once, was 
afterwards settled by a sensible compromise. It 
was agreed that on a change of Ministry the 
Queen would listen to any representation from 
the incoming Prime-minister as to the composi- 
tion of the household, and would arrange for the 
retirement "of their own accord " of any ladies 
who were so closely related to the leaders of Op- 
position as to render their presence inconven- 
ient. The Whigs came back to office utterly 
discredited. They had to tinker up somehow 
a new Jamaica Bill. They had declared that 
they could not remain in office unless they were 
allowed to deal in a certain way with Jamaica; 
and now that they were back again in office they 
could not avoid trying to do something with the 
Jamaica business. They therefore introduced 
a new bill, which was a mere compromise, put 
together in the hope of its being allowed to pass. 
It was allowed to pass, after a fashion : that is, 
when the Opposition in the House of Lords had 
tinkered it and amended it at their pleasure. 
The bedchamber question, in fact, had thrown 
Jamaica out of perspective. The unfortunate isl- 
and must do the best it could now ; in this coun- 
ty statesmen had graver matters to think of. 
Sir Robert Peel could not govern with Lady 
Normanbyj the Whigs would not govern with- 
out her. 

The Melbourne Government were prejudiced 
in the public mind by these events, and by the 
attacks for which they gave so large an oppor- 
tunity. The feeling in some parts of the coun- 
try was still sentimentally with the Queen. At 
many a dinner-table it became the fashion to 
drink the health of her Majesty with a punning 
addition, not belonging to an order of wit any 
higher than that which in other days toasted the 
King "over the water," or prayed of Heaven to 
"send this crumb well down." The Queen was 
toasted as the Sovereign of spirit who " would 
not let her belles be Peeled." But the Ministry 
were almost universally believed to have placed 
themselves in a ridiculous light, and to have 
crept again into office " behind the petticoats of 
the ladies in waiting." 

On January 16, 1840, the Queen, opening 
Parliament in person, announced her intention 
to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe- 
Coburg-Gotha — a step which she trusted would 
be " conducive to the interests of my people as 
well as to my own domestic happiness." In the 
discussion which followed in the House of Com- 
mons, Sir Robert Peel observed that her Majesty 
had "the singular good-fortune to be able to 
gratify her private feelings, while she performs 
her public duty, and to obtain the best guaran- 
tee for happiness, by contracting an alliance 
founded on affection." Peel spoke the simple 
truth; it was indeed a marriage founded on af- 
fection. No marriage contracted in the hum- 
blest class could have been more entirely a un- 
ion of love, and more free from what might be 
called selfish and worldly considerations. The 
Queen had for a long time loved her cousin, 
lie was nearly her own age, the Queen being the 
elder by three months and two or three days 
Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel was 
the full name of the young Prince. He was the 
second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg- 
, Saalfeld, and of his wife, Louisa, daughter of 
Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha- Altenburg. 



Prince Albert was born at the Rosenau, one of 
his father's residences, near Coburg, on August 
26, 1819. 

Prince Albert was a young man to win the 
heart of any girl. He was singularly handsome, 
graceful, and gifted. In princes, as we know, 
a small measure of beauty and accomplishment 
suffices to throw courtiers and court ladies into 
transports of admiration ; but had Prince Albert 
been the son of a farmer or a butler, he must 
have been admired for his singular personal at- 
tractions. He had had a sound and a varied 
education. He bad been brought up as if he 
were to be a professional musician, a profession- 
al chemist or botanist, and a professor of history 
and belles-lettres and the fine arts. The scien- 
tific and the literary were remarkably blended in 
his bringing-up. He had begun to study the 
constitutional history of States, and was prepar- 
ing himself to take an interest in politics. There 
was much of the practical and business-like 
about him, as he showed in after-life; he loved 
farming, and took a deep interest in machinery 
and in the growth of industrial science. His 
tastes were for a quiet, domestic, and unostenta- 
tious life — a life of refined culture, of happy, calm 
evenings, of art and poetry and genial commun- 
ion with nature. He was made happy by the 
songs of birds, and'delighted in sitting alone and 
playing the organ. But there was in him, too, 
a great deal of the political philosopher. He 
loved to bear political and other questions well 
argued out, and once observed that a false argu- 
ment jarred on his nerves as much as a false note 
in music. He seems to have had from his youth 
an all-pervading sense of duty. So far as we 
can guess, he was almost absolutely free from 
the ordinary follies, not to say sins, of youth. 
Young as he was when he married the Queen, 
he devoted himself at once to what he conscien- 
tiously believed to be the duties of his station 
with a self-control and self-devotion rare even 
among the aged, and almost unknown in youth. 
He gave up every habit, however familiar and 
dear, every predilection, no matter how sweet, 
every indulgence of sentiment or amusement, 
that in any way threatened to interfere with the 
steadfast performance of the part he had assigned 
to himself. No man ever devoted himself more 
faithfully to the difficult duties of a high and 
new situation, or kept more strictly to his re- 
solve. It was no task to him to be a tender 
husband and a loving father. This was a part 
of his sweet, pure, and affectionate nature. It 
may well be doubted whether any other queen 
ever had a married life so happy as that of Queen 
Victoria. 

The marriage of the Queen and the Prince 
took place on February 10, 1840. The recep- 
tion given by the people in general to the Prince 
on his landing in England a few days before the 
ceremony, and on the day of the marriage, was 
cordial and even enthusiastic. But it is not 
certain whether there was a very cordial feeling 
to the Prince among all classes of politicians. 
A rumor of the most absurd kind had got 
abroad in certain circles that Prince Albert was 
not a Protestant — that he was, in, fact a mem- 
ber of the Church of Rome. Somewhat unfortu- 
nately, the declaration of the intended marriage 
to the Privy Council did not mention the fact 
that Albert was a Protestant Prince. The re- 
sult was that in the debate on the address in the 
House of Lords an unseemly altercation took 
place — an altercation the more to be regretted, 
because it might have been so easily spared. 
The question was bluntly raised by no less a 
person than the Duke of Wellington whether 
the future husband of the Queen was or was not 
a Protestant. The Duke actually charged the 
Ministry with having purposely left out the 
word '"Protestant" in the announcements, in 
order that they might not offend their Irish and 
Catholic supporters, and moved that the word 
" Protestant" be inserted in the congratulatory 
address to the Queen, and he earned his point, 
although Lord Melbourne held to the opinion 
that the word was unnecessary in describing a 
Prince who^was not only a Protestant but de- 
scended from the most Protestant family in 
Europe. The lack of judgment and tact on the 



part of the Ministry was never more clearly 
shown than in the original omission of the word. 

A \'<!\v months after the marriage a bill was 
passed naming Prince Albert Regent in the pos- 
sible event of the death of the Queen, leaving 
issue. The passing of this bill was naturally 
regarded as of much importance to Prince Al- 
bert. It gave him to some extent the status in 
the country which he had not had before. No 
one could have started with a more resolute de- 
termination to stand clear of party politics than 
Prince Albert. He accepted at once his position 
as the husband of the Queen of a constitutional 
country. His own idea of his duty was that he 
should be the private secretary and unofficial 
counsellor of the Queen. To this purpose be 
devoted himself unswervingly. Outside that 
part of his duties, he constituted himself a sort 
of minister without portfolio of art and educa- 
tion. He took an interest, and often a leading 
part, in all projects and movements relating to 
the spread of education, the culture of art, and 
the promotion of industrial science. Yet it was 
long before he was thoroughly understood by 
the country. It was long before he became in 
any degree popular, and it may be doubted 
whether he ever was thoroughly and generally 
popular. Not perhaps until his untimely death 
did the country find out how entirely disinter- 
ested and faithful his life had been, and how he 
had made the discharge of duty his business and 
bis task. Prince Albert had not the ways of an 
Englishman, and the tendency of Englishmen, 
then as now, was to assume that to have man- 
ners other than those of an Englishman was to 
be so far unworthy of confidence. He was not 
made to shine in commonplace society. He 
could talk admirably about something, but he 
had not the gift of talking about nothing, and 
probably would not have cared much to culti- 
vate such a faculty. He was fond of suggesting 
small innovations and improvements in estab- 
lished systems, to the annoyance of men with set 
ideas, who liked their own ways best. Thus it 
happened that he remained for many years, if 
not exactly unappreciated, yet not thoroughly 
appreciated, and that a considerable and very 
influential section of society was always ready 
to cavil at what he said, and find motive for 
suspicion in most things that he did. Perhaps 
he was best understood and most cordially ap- 
preciated among the poorer classes of. his wife's 
subjects. He found also more cordial approval 
generally among the Radicals than among the 
Tories, or even the Whigs. 

One reform which Prince Albert worked ear- 
nestly to bring about was the abolition of duel- 
ling in the army. Nothing can testify more 
strikingly to the rapid growth of a genuine civil- 
ization in Queen Victoria's reign than the utter 
discontinuance of the duelling system. When 
the Queen came to the throne, and for years 
after, it was still in full force. The duel plays 
a conspicuous part in the fiction and the drama 
of the Sovereign's earlier years. It was a com- 
mon incident of all political controversies. It 
was an episode of most contested elections. It 
was often resorted to for the purpose of deciding 
the right or wrong of a half- drunken quarrel 
over a card - table. It formed as common a 
theme of gossip as an elopement or a bankrupt-; 
cy. Most of the eminent statesmen who were 
prominent in the earlier part of the Queen's 
reign had fought duel.-. At the present hour a 
duel in England would seem as absurd and bar- 
barous an anachronism as an ordeal by touch 
or a w itch-burning. 

This is perhaps as suitable a place as any other 
to introduce some notice of the attempts that 
were made from time to time upon the life of the 
Queen. It is proper to say something of ilicin, 
although not one possessed the slightest political 
importance, or could be said to illustrate anything 
more than sheer lunacy, or that morbid vanity 
and thirst for notoriety, that is neatly akin to 
genuine madness. The first attempt was made 
on June 10, 1840, by Edward Oxford, a pot boy 
of seventeen, who fired two shots at the Queen 
/is she was driving up Constitution Hill with 
.'Prince Albert, but happily missed in each case. 
The jury pronounced him insane, and he was or- 



12 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



dered to be kept in a lunatic asylum during her 
Majesty's pleasure. On May 30, 1S42, a man 
named John Francis, son of a machinist in Drury 
Lane, fired a pistol at the Queen as she was driv- 
ing down Constitution Hill, on the very spot where 
Oxford's attempt was made. Francis was sen- 
tenced to death, but her Majesty herself was 
anxious that the death-sentence should not be 
carried into effect, and it was finally commuted 
to one of transportation for life. The very day 
after this mitigation of punishment became pub- 
licly known another attempt was made by a 
hunch-backed lad named Bean, as the Queen 
was passing from Buckingham Palace to the 
Chapel Royal. The ambition which fired most 
or all of the miscreants who thus disturbed the 
Queen and the country was that of the mounte- 
bank rather than of the assassin. A bill was in- 
troduced by Sir Robert Peel making such attempts 
punishable by transportation for seven years, or 
by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three 
years, "the culprit to be publicly or privately 
whipped as often and in such manner as the 
court shall direct, not exceeding thrice." Bean 
was convicted under this act and sentenced to 
eighteen months' imprisonment in Millbank Pen- 
itentiary. This did not, however, conclude the 
attacks on the Queen. An Irish bricklayer, 
named Hamilton, filed a pistol, charged only 
with powder, at her Majesty, on Constitution 
Hill, on May 19, 1S49, and was sentenced to 
seven years' transportation. A man named Rob- 
ert Pate, once a lieutenant of hussars, struck her 
Majesty on the face with a stick as she was leav- 
ing the Duke of Cambridge's residence in her 
carriage on May 27, 1850. This man was sen- 
tenced to seven years' transportation, but the 
judge paid so much attention to the plea of in- 
sanity set up on his behalf, as to omit from his 
punishment the whipping which might have been 
ordered. On February 29, 1872, a lad of seven- 
teen, named Arthur O'Connor, presented a pistol 
at the Queen as she was entering Buckingham 
Palace after a drive. The pistol, however, proved 
to be unloaded — an antique and useless or harm- 
less weapon, with a flint lock which was broken, 
and in the barrel a piece of greasy red rag. The 
wretched lad held a paper in one hand which 
was found to be some sort of petition on behalf 
of the Fenian prisoners. He was sentenced to 
twelve months' imprisonment and a whipping. 
Ten years later, on March 2, 1882, a man named 
Roderick Maclean fired at and missed the Queen 
as she was driving from the railway-station at 
Windsor. Maclean was found to be a person 
of weak intellect who had at one time been pos- 
itively insane, and the attempt had no political 
significance whatever. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE AFGHAN WAR. 

The earliest days of the Peel Ministry fell 
upon trouble, not, indeed, at home, but abroad. 
At home the prospect still seemed bright. The 
birth of the Queen's eldest son was an event wel- 
comed by national congratulation. There was 
still great distress in the agricultural districts ; 
but there was a general confidence that the finan- 
cial genius of Peel would quickly find some way 
to make burdens light, and that the condition 
of things all over the country would begin to 
mend. It was a region far removed from the 
knowledge and the thoughts of most Englishmen 
that supplied the news now beginning to come 
into England day after day, and to thrill the 
country with the tale of one of the greatest dis- 
asters to English policy and English arms to be 
found in all the record of our dealings with the 
East. 

News travelled slowly then ; and it was quite 
in the ordinary course of things that some part 
of the empire might be torn with convulsion for 
months before London knew that the even and 
ordinary condition of things had been disturbed. 
In this instance the rejoicings at the accession 
of the young Queen were still going on, when 
a series of events had begun in Central Asia 
destined to excite the profouudest emotion in 
England, and to exercise the most powerful influ- 
ence upon our foreign policy down to the present 



hour. On September 20, 1837, Captain Alex- 
ander Burnes arrived at Cabul, the capital of 
the state of Cabul, in the north of Afghanistan. 
Burnes was a famous Orientalist and traveller: 
he had conducted an expedition into Central 
Asia; had published his travels in Bokhara, and 
had been sent on a mission by the Indian Gov- 
ernment, in whose service he was, to study the 
navigation of the Indus. The object of his 
journey to Cabul in 1837 was to enter into com- 
mercial relations with Dost Mahomed, then ruler 
of Cabul, and with other chiefs of the western 
regions. • 

The great region of Afghanistan has been 
called the land of transition between Eastern 
and Western Asia. All the great ways that 
lead from Persia to India pass through that 
region. There is a proverb which declares that 
no one can be king of Hindostan without first 
becoming lord of Cabul. The Afghans are the 
ruling nation, but among them had long been 
settled Hindoos, Arabs, Armenians, Abyssinians, 
and men of other races and religions. The 
founder of the Afghan empire, Ahmed Shah, 
died in 1773. He had made an empire which 
stretched from Herat on the west to Sirhind on 
the east, and from the Oxus and Cashmere on 
the north to the Arabian Sea and the months 
of the Indus on the south. The death of his 
son, Timur Shah, delivered the kingdom up to 
the hostile factions, intrigues, and quarrels of 
his sons ; the leaders of a powerful tribe, the 
Barukzyes, took advantage of the events that 
arose out of this condition of things to dethrone 
the descendants of Ahmed Shah. When Cap- 
tain Burnes visited Afghanistan in 1S32 the only 
part of all their great inheritance which yet re- 
mained with the descendants of Ahmed Shah 
was the principality of Herat. The remainder 
of Afghanistan was parcelled out between Dost 
Mahomed and his brothers. Dost Mahomed 
was a man of extraordinary ability and energy. 
Although he was a usurper he was a sincere 
lover of his country, and on the whole a wise 
and just ruler. When Captain Burnes visited 
Dost Mahomed, Dost Mahomed professed to be 
a sincere friend of the English Government and 
people. There was, however, at that time a 
quarrel going on between the Shah of Persia 
and the Prince of Herat, the last enthroned rep- 
resentative, as has been already said, of the great 
family on whose fall Dost Mahomed and his 
brothers had mounted into power. The strong 
impression at the time in England, and among 
the authorities in India, was that Persia herself 
was but a puppet in the hands of Russia, and 
that the attack on Herat was the first step of a 
great movement of Russia towards our Indian 
dominion. 

Undoubtedly Russia did set herself, for some 
reason, to win the friendship and alliance of Dost 
Mahomed ; and Captain Burnes was for his part 
engaged in the same endeavor. Burnes always 
insisted that Dost Mahomed himself was sincere- 
ly anxious to become an ally of England, and 
that he offered more than once on his own free 
part to dismiss the Russian agents even without 
seeing them, if Burnes desired him to do so. 
But for some reason Barnes's superiors had the 
profoundest distrust of Dost Mahomed. It was 
again and again impressed on Burnes that he 
must regard Dost Mahomed as a treacherous 
enemy and as a man playing the part of Persia 
and of Russia. 

Captain Burnes, then, was placed in the painful 
difficulty of having to carry out a policy of which 
he entirely disapproved. He believed in Dost 
Mahomed as a friend, and he was ordered to 
regard him as an enemy. On the other hand, 
Dost Mahomed was placed in a position of great 
difficulty and danger. If England would not 
support him, he must for his own safety find 
alliances elsewhere — in Russian state-craft, for 
example. Runjeet Singh, the daring and suc- 
cessful adventurer who had annexed the whole 
province of Cashmere to his dominions, was the 
enemy of Dost Mahomed and the faithful ally 
of England. Dost Mahomed thought the Brit- 
ish Government could assist him in coming to 
terms with Runjeet Singh, and Burnes had as- 
sured him that the British Government would 



do all it could to establish satisfactory terms 
of peace between Afghanistan and the Punjaub, 
over which Runjeet Singh ruled. Burnes, how- 
ever, was unable to impress his superiors with 
any belief either in Dost Mahomed or in the 
policy which he himself advocated. The Eng- 
lish Government had presented to the House of 
Commons his despatches in so mutilated and 
altered a form, that Burnes was made to seem 
as if he actually approved and recommended 
the policy which he especially warned us to 
avoid. The result was that Lord Auckland, the 
Governor-general of India, at length resolved to 
treat Dost Mahomed as an enemy, and to drive 
him from Cabul. Lord Auckland, therefore, 
entered into a treaty with Runjeet Singh and 
Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, the exiled representa- 
tive of what we may call the legitimist rulers of 
Afghanistan, for the restoration of the latter to 
the throne of his ancestors, and for the destruc- 
tion of the power of Dost Mahomed. 

Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk was at the time living 
in exile, without the faintest hope of ever again 
being restored to his dominions. We pulled the 
poor man out of his obscurity, told him that his 
people were yearning for him, and that we would 
set him on his throne once more. 

We conquered Dost Mahomed and dethroned 
him. He made a bold and brilliant, sometimes 
even a splendid, resistance. As we approached 
Cabul, Dost Mahomed abandoned his capital 
and fled with a few horsemen across the Indus. 
Shah Soojah entered Cabul accompanied by the 
British officers. It was to have been a trium- 
phal entry. The hearts of those who believed 
in his cause must have sunk within them when 
they saw how the Shah was received by the peo- 
ple. The city received him in sullen silence. 
Few of its people condescended even to turn out 
to see him as he passed. The vast majority 
stayed away and disdained even to look at him. 
One would have thought that the least observant 
eye must have seen that his throne could not 
last a moment longer than the time during 
which the strength of Britain was willing to sup- 
port it. The British army, however, withdrew, 
leaving only a contingent of some eight thousand 
men, besides the Shah's own hirelings, to main- 
tain him for the present. Sir W. Macnaghten 
seems to have really believed that the work was 
done, and that Shah Soojah was as safe on his 
throne as Queen Victoria. He was destined to 
be very soon and very cruelly undeceived. 

Dost Mahomed made more than one effort to 
regain his place. He invaded Shah Soojah's 
dominions, and on November 2, 1840, had won 
the admiration of the English themselves by the 
brilliant stand he made against them. In this 
battle of Purwandurrah victory might not unrea- 
sonably have been claimed for Dost Mahomed. 
But Dost Mahomed had the wisdom of a states- 
man as well as the genius of a soldier. He knew 
well that he could not hold out against the 
strength of England. The evening after his 
brilliant exploit in the field Dost Mahomed rode 
quietly up to the quarters of Sir W. Macnagh- 
ten, announced himself as Dost Mahomed, ten- 
dered to the envoy the sword that had flashed so 
splendidly across the field of the previous day's 
fight, and surrendered himself a prisoner. His 
sword was returned ; he was treated with all 
honor; and a few days afterwards he was sent 
to India, where a residence and a revenue were 
assigned to him. 

But the withdrawal of Dost Mahomed from 
the scene did nothing to secure the reign of the 
unfortunate Shah Soojah. Sir W. Macnaghten 
was warned of danger, but seemed to take no 
heed. Some fatal blindness appears to have 
suddenly fallen on the eyes of our people in 
Cabul. On November 2, 1841, an insurrection 
broke out. Sir Alexander Burnes lived in the 
city itself; Sir W. Macnaghten and the military 
commander, Major-General Elphinstone, were 
with the troops in cantonments at some little 
distance outside the cit)'. The insurrection 
might have been put down in the first instance 
easily, but it was allowed to grow up without 
attempt at control. Sir Alexander Burnes could 
not be got to believe that it was anything serious, 
even when a fanatical and furious mob were be- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



13 



sieging his own house. The fanatics were es- 
pecially bitter against Burnes, because they 
believed that he had been guilty of treachery. 
They accused him of having pretended to be the 
friend of Dost Mahomed, deceived him, and 
brought the English into the country. To the 
last Burnes refused to believe that he was in 
danger. He harangued the raging mob, and 
endeavored to bring them to reason. He was 
murdered in the tumult. He and his brother 
and all those with them were hacked to pieces 
with Afghan knives. He was only in his thirty- 
seventh year when he was murdered. Fate sel- 
dom showed with more strange and bitter malice 
her proverbial irony than when she made him 
the first victim of the policy adopted in despite 
of his best advice and his strongest warnings. 

The murder of Burnes was only a beginning. 
The whole country threw itself into insurrection. 
The Afghans attacked the cantonments, and 
actually compelled the English to abandon the 
forts in which all our commissariat was stored. 
We were thus threatened with famine, even if 
we could resist the enemy in arms. We were 
strangely unfortunate in our civil and military 
leaders. Sir W. Macnaghten was a man of high 
character and good purpose, but he was weak 
and credulous. The commander, General El- 
phinstone, was old, infirm, tortured by disease, 
broken down both in mind and body, incapable 
of forming a purpose of his own, or of holding to 
one suggested by anybody else. His second in 
command was a far stronger and abler man, but 
unhappily the two could never agree. 

A new figure appeared on the scene, a dark 
and a fierce apparition. This was Akbar Khan, 
the favorite son of Dost Mahomed. He was a 
daring, a clever, an unscrupulous young man. 
From the moment when he entered Cabul he 
became the real leader of the insurrection 
against Shah Soojah and us. Macnaghten, per- 
suaded by the military commander that the posi- 
tion of things was hopeless, consented to enter 
into negotiations with Akbar Khan. Akbar 
Khan received him at first with contemptuous 
insolence — as a haughty conqueror receives some 
ignoble and humiliated adversary. It was 
agreed that the British troops should quit Af- 
ghanistan at once ; that Dost Mahomed and his 
family should be sent back to Afghanistan ; that 
on his return the unfortunate Shah Soojah should 
be allowed to take himself oft" to India or where 
he would ; and that some British officers should 
be left at Cabul as hostages for the fulfilment of 
the conditions. 

The evacuation did not take place at once, al- 
though the fierce winter was setting in, and the 
snow was falling heavily, ominously. On both sides 
there were dairyings and delays. At last Akbar 
Khan made a new and startling proposition to 
our envoy. It was that they two should enter 
into a secret treaty, should unite their arms 
against the other chiefs, and should keep Shah 
Soojah on the throne as nominal king, with Ak- 
bar Khan as his vizier. Macnaghten caught at 
the proposals. He had entered into terms of 
negotiation with the Afghan chiefs together ; he 
now consented to enter into a secret treaty with 
one of the chiefs to turn their joint arms against 
the others. It would be idle and shameful to 
attempt to defend such a policy. When every 
excuse has been thought of, we must still be glad 
to believe that there are not many Englishmen 
who would, under any circumstances, have con- 
sented even to give a hearing to the proposals 
of Akbar Khan. 

Macnaghten's error was dearly expiated. He 
went out at noon next day to confer with Akbar 
Khan on the banks of the neighboring river. 
Three of his officers were with him. Akbar 
Khan was ominously surrounded by friends and 
retainers. Not many words were spoken. The 
expected conference had hardly begun when a 
signal was given or an order issued by Akbar 
Khan, and the envoy and the officers were sud- 
denly seized from behind. A scene of wild con- 
fusion followed, in which hardly anything is clear 
and certain but the one most horrible incident. 
The envoy struggled with Akbar Khan, who had 
himself seized Macnaghten. Akbar Khan drew 
from bis belt one of a pair of pistols which Mac- 



naghten had presented to him a short time be- 
fore, and shot him through the body. The fanat- 
ics who were crowding round hacked the body 
to pieces with their knives. Of the three officers 
one was killed on the spot ; the other two were 
forced to mount Afghan horses and carried away 
as prisoners. 

It seems certain that the treachery of Akbar, 
base as it was, did not contemplate more than 
the seizure of the envoy and his officers. On 
the fatal day the latter resisted and struggled ; 
Akbar Khan heard a cry of alarm that the Eng- 
lish soldiers were coming out of cantonments to 
rescue the envoy, and, wild with passion, he sud- 
denly drew his pistol and fired. This was the 
statement made again and again by Akbar Khan 
himself. The explanation does not much relieve 
the darkness of Akbar Khan's character. There 
is not the slightest reason to suppose that he 
would have shrunk from any treachery or any 
cruelty which served his purpose. But it is well 
to bear in mind that poor Macnaghten would not 
have been murdered had he not consented to 
meet Akbar Khan and treat with him on a prop- 
osition to which an English official should never 
have listened. 

The little English force in the cantonments 
did not know until the following day that any 
calamity had befallen the envoy. On December 
24, 1841, came a letter from one of the officers 
seized by Akbar Khan, accompanying proposals 
for a treaty from the Afghan chiefs. It is hard 
now to understand how any English officers could 
have consented to enter into terms with the mur- 
derers of Macnaghten before his mangled body 
could well have ceased to bleed. We can all see 
the difficulty of their position. General Elphin- 
stone and his second in command, Brigadier 
Shelton, were convinced that it would be equally 
impossible to stay where they were or to cut their 
way through the Afghans. But it might have 
occurred to many that they were nevertheless 
not bound to treat with the Afghans; that they 
were not ordered by Fate to accept whatever the 
conquerors chose to offer. One English officer 
of mark did counsel his superiors in this spirit. 
This was Major Eldred Fottinger. Pottinger 
was for cutting their way through all enemies 
and difficulties as far as they could, and then 
occupy the ground with their dead bodies. But 
his advice was hardly taken into consideration. 
It was determined to treat with the Afghans ; 
and treating with the Afghans now meant ac- 
cepting any terms the Afghans chose to impose 
on their fallen enemies. In the negotiations that 
went on some written documents were exchanged. 
One of these, drawn up by the English negotia- 
tors, contains an appeal to the Afghan conquer- 
ors which we believe to be absolutely unique in 
the history of British dealings with armed ene- 
mies : "In friendship, kindness and considera- 
tion are necessary, not overpowering the weak 
with sufferings!" In friendship! — we appealed 
to the friendship of Macnaghten's murderers ; to 
the friendship, in any case, of the man whose 
father we had dethroned and driven into exile. 
Not overpowering the weak with sufferings ! The 
weak were the English ! One might fancy he 
was reading the plaintive and piteous appeal of 
some forlorn and feeble tribe of helpless half- 
breeds for the mercy of arrogant and mastering 
rulers. Only the other day, it would seem, these 
men had received in surrender the bright sword 
of Dost Mahomed. Now they could only plead 
for a little gentleness of consideration, and had 
no thought of resistance, and did not any longer 
seem to know how to die. 

We accepted the terms of treaty offered to us. 
The English were at once to take themselves off 
out of Afghanistan, giving up all their guns ex- 
cept six, which they were allowed to retain for 
their necessary defence in their mournful journey 
home ; they were to leave behind all the treasure, 
and to guarantee the payment of something ad- 
ditional for the safe conduct of the poor little 
army to Peshawar or to Jelalabad ; and they 
were to hand over six officers as hostages fur the 
due fulfilment of the conditions. The conditions 
included the immediate release of Dost Mahomed 
and his family and their return to Afghanistan. 
When the treaty was signed the officers who had 



been seized when Macnaghten was murdered 
were released. 

The withdrawal from Cabul began. It was 
the heart of a cruel winter. The English had to 
make their way through the awful Pass of Koord 
Cabul. This stupendous gorge runs for some 
five miles between mountain ranges so narrow, 
lofty, and grim, that in the winter season the rays 
of the sun can hardly pierce its darkness even at 
the noontide. Down the centre dashed a precip- 
itous mountain torrent so fiercely that the stern 
frost of that terrible time could not stay its 
course. The snow lay in masses on the ground ; 
the rocks and stones that raised their heads 
above the snow in the way of the unfortunate 
travellers were slippery with frost. Soon the 
white snow began to be stained and splashed 
with blood. Fearful as this Koord Cabul Pass 
was, it was only a degree worse than the road 
which for two whole days the English had to 
traverse to reach it. The army which set out 
from Cabul numbered more than four thousand 
fighting-men, of whom Europeans, it should be 
said, formed but a small proportion ; and some 
twelve thousand camp followers of all kinds. 
There were also many women and children : 
Lady Macnaghten, widow of the murdered en- 
voy; Lady Sale, whose gallant husband was 
holding Jelalabad, at the near end of the Khyber 
Pass towards the Indian frontier ; Mrs. Sturt, 
her daughter, soon to be widowed by the death 
of her young husband ; Mrs. Trevor and her 
seven children, and many other pitiable fugitives. 
The winter journey would have been cruel and 
dangerous enough in time of peace ; but this 
journey had to be accomplished in the midst of 
something far worse than common war. At ev- 
ery step of the road, every opening of the rocks, 
the unhappy crowd of confused and heterogene- 
ous fugitives were beset by bands of savage fa- 
natics, who with their long guns and long knives 
were murdering all they could reach. The Eng- 
lish soldiers, weary, weak, and crippled by frost, 
could make but a poor fight against the savage 
Afghans. Men, women, and children, horses, 
ponies, camels, the wounded, the dying, the dead, 
all crowded together in almost inextricable con- 
fusion among the snow and amid the relentless 
enemies. 

Akbar Khan constantly appeared on the scene 
During this journey of terror. At every opening 
or break of the long, straggling flight he and his 
little band of followers showed themselves on the 
horizon, trying still to protect the English from 
utter ruin, as he declared ; come to gloat over 
their misery and to see that it was surely accom- 
plished, some of the unhappy English were ready 
to believe. Yet his presence was something that 
seemed to give a hope of protection. Akbar 
Khan at length startled the English by a pro- 
posal that the women and children who were 
with the army should be handed over to his cus- 
tody, to be conveyed by him in safety to Pesha- 
wur. There was nothing better to be done. 
The women and children and the married men 
whose wives were among this party were taken 
from the unfortunate army and placed under the 
care of Akbar Khan, and Lady Macnaghten had 
to undergo the agony of a personal interview 
with the man whose own hand had killed her 
husband. Akbar Khan was kindly in his lan- 
guage, and declared to the unhappy widow that 
he would give his right arm to undo, if it were 
possible, the deed that he had done. 

The march was resumed ; new horrors set in ; 
new heaps of corpses stained the snow ; and then 
Akbar Khan presented himself with a fresh prop- 
osition. He demanded that General Elphinstone, 
the commander, with his second in command, 
and also one other officer, should hand them- 
selves over to him as hostages. He promised if 
this were done to exert himself more than before 
to restrain the fanatical tribes, and also to provide 
the army in the Koord Cabul Pass with provi- 
sions. There was nothing for it but to submit ; 
and the English general himself became, with 
the women and children, a captive in the bauds 
of the inexorable enemy. 

Then the march of the army, without a gen- 
eral, went on again. Soon it became the story 
of a general without an army ; before very long 



u 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



there was neither general nor army. It is idle 
to lengthen a tale of mere horrors. The strag- 
gling remnant of an army entered the Jugdulluk 
Pass^a dark, steep, narrow, ascending path be- 
tween crags. The miserable toilers found that 
the fanatical, implacable tribes had barricaded 
the pass. All was over. The army of Cabal 
was finally extinguished in that barricaded pass. 
It was a trap : the British were taken in it. A 
few mere fugitives escaped from the scene of 
actual slaughter, and were on the road to Jelala- 
bad, where Sale and his little army were hold- 
ing their own. When they were within sixteen 
miles of Jelalabad the number was reduced to 
six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling 
marauders on the way. One man alone reached 
Jelalabad to tell the tale. Literally one man, 
Dr. Brydon, came to Jelalabad out of a moving 
host which had numbered in all some sixteen 
thousand when it set out on its march. The 
curious eye will search through history or fiction 
in vain for any picture more thrilling with the 
suggestions of an awful catastrophe than that of 
this solitary survivor, faint and reeling on his 
jaded horse, as he appeared under the walls of 
Jelalabad, to bear the tidings of our Thermopylae 
of pain and shame. 

This is the crisis of the story. The rest is all 
recovery. The garrison at Jelalabad had re- 
ceived before Dr. Brydon's arrival an intima- 
tion that they were to go out and march towards 
India, in accordance with the terms of the treaty 
extorted from Elphinstone at Cabul. They very 
properly declined to be bound by a treaty which, 
as General Sale rightly conjectured, had been 
"forced from our envoy and military com- 
mander with the knives at their throats." Gen- 
eral Sale's determination was clear and simple : 
" I propose to hold this place on the part of 
Government until I receive its order to the 
contrary." This resolve of Sale's was really the 
turning-point of the history. Akbar Khan 
besieged Jelalabad. The garrison held out fear- 
lessly ; they resisted every attempt of Akbar 
Khan to advance upon their works, and at 
length, when it became certain that General Pol- 
lock was forcing the Khyber Pass to come to 
their relief, they issued boldly out of their forts, 
forced a battle on the Afghan chief, and complete- 
ly defeated him. Before Pollock, having gallant- 
ly fought his way through the Khyber Pass, had 
reached Jelalabad, the beleaguering army had 
been entirely defeated and dispersed. General 
Nott at Candahar was ready now to co-operate 
with General Sale and General Pollock for any 
movement on Cabul which the authorities might 
advise or sanction. Meanwhile, the unfortunate 
Shah Soojah, whom we had restored with so 
much pomp of announcement to the throne of 
his ancestors, was dead. He was assassinated 
in Cabul, soon after the departure of the British, 
by the orders of some of the chiefs who detested 
him ; and his body, stripped of its royal robes 
and its many jewels, was flung into a ditch. All 
Shah Soojah owed to us was a few weeks of idle 
pomp and absurd dreams, a bitter awakening, 
and a shameful death. 

During this time a new Governor-general had 
arrived in India. Lord Auckland's time had 
run out, and during its latter months he had be- 
come nerveless and despondent, because of the 
utter failure of the policy which in an evil hour 
for himself and his country he had been induced 
to undertake. He was an honorable, kindly 
gentleman, and the news of all the successive 
calamities fell upon him with a crushing, an 
overwhelming weight. He seemed to have no 
other idea than that of getting all our troops as 
quickly as might be out of Afghanistan, and 
shaking the dust of the place off our feet for- 
ever. He was, in fact, a broken man. 

His successor was Lord Ellenborough. He 
was well acquainted with the affairs of India. 
He had come into office under Sir Robert Peel 
on the resignation of the Melbourne Ministry. 
He was looked upon as a man of great ability 
and energy. It was known that his personal 
predilections were for the career of a soldier. 
He was fond of telling his hearers then and since 
that the life of a camp was that which he should 
have loved to lead. He was a man of great and, 



in certain lights, apparently splendid abilities. 
There was a certain Orientalism about his lan- 
guage, his aspirations, and his policy. He loved 
gorgeousness and dramatic — ill-natured persons 
said theatric — effects. Life arranged itself in 
his eyes as a superb and showy pageant of which 
it would have been his ambition to form the cen- 
tral figure. His eloquence was often of a lofty 
and noble order. But if Lord Ellenborough was 
in some respects a man of genius, he was also a 
man whose love of mere effects often made him 
seem like a quack. He was a man of great 
abilities and earnestness, who had in him a 
strong dash of the play-actor, who at the most 
serious moment of emergency always thought of 
how to display himself effectively, and would 
have met the peril of an empire with an over- 
mastering desire to show to the best personal 
advantage. 

Lord Ellenborough's appointment was hailed 
by all parties in India as the most auspicious 
that could be made. But those who thought in 
this way found themselves suddenly disappoint- 
ed. Lord Ellenborough uttered and wrote a 
few showy sentences about revenging our losses 
and " re-establishing in all its original brilliancy 
our military character," and then at once he 
announced that the only object of the Govern- 
ment was to get the troops out of Afghanistan 
as quickly as might be, and almost on any 
terms. A general outcry was raised in India 
and among the troops in Afghanistan against 
the extraordinary policy which Lord Ellenbor- 
ough propounded. Englishmen, in fact, refused 
to believe in it ; took it as something that must 
be put aside. The Governor -general himself 
after a while quietly put it aside. He allowed 
the military commanders in Afghanistan to pull 
their resources together and prepare for inflict- 
ing signal chastisement on the enemy. They 
were not long in doing this. They encountered 
the enemy wherever he showed himself and de- 
feated him. They recaptured town after town, 
until at length, on September 15, 1842, General 
Pollock's force entered Cabul. A few days 
after, as a lasting mark of retribution for the 
crimes which had been committed there, the 
British commander ordered the destruction of 
the great bazaar of Cabul, where the mangled 
remains of the unfortunate envoy Macnaghten 
had been exhibited in brutal triumph and joy 
to the Afghan populace. 

The captives, or hostages, who were hurried 
away that terrible January night at the command 
of Akbar Khan had yet to be recovered. There 
was a British general who was disposed to leave 
them to their fate and take no trouble about 
them, and who declared himself under the con- 
viction, from the tenor of all Lord Ellenbor- 
ough's despatches, that the recovery of the pris- 
oners was " a matter of indifference to the Gov- 
ernment." Better counsels, however, prevailed. 
General Pollock insisted on an effort being 
made to recover the prisoners before the troops 
began to return to India, and he appointed to 
this noble duty the husband of one of the hos- 
tage ladies — Sir Robert Sale. The prisoners 
were recovered with greater ease than was ex- 
pected — so many of them as were yet alive. 
Poor General Elphinstone had long before suc- 
cumbed to disease and hardship. The ladies 
had gone through strange privations. They suf- 
fered almost every fierce alternation of cold and 
heat. They had to live on the coarsest fare ; 
they were lodged in a manner which would have 
made the most wretched prison accommodation 
of a civilized country seem luxurious by com- 
parison ; they were in constant uncertainty and 
fear, not knowing what might befall. Yet they 
seem to have held up their courage and spirits 
wonderfully well, and to have kept the hearts 
of the children alive with mirth and sport at 
moments of the utmost peril. They were car- 
ried oft' to the wild, rugged regions of the Indian 
Caucasus, under the charge of one of Akbar 
Khan's soldiers of fortune. This man had be- 
gun to suspect that things were well-nigh hope- 
less with Akbar Khan. He was induced to en- 
ter into an agreement with the prisoners secur- 
ing him a large reward, and a pension for life, 
if he enabled them to escape. He accordingly 



declared that he renounced his allegiance te 
Akbar Khan ; all the more readily, seeing that 
news came in of the chief's total defeat and 
flight, no one knew whither. The prisoners and 
their escort, lately their jailer and guards, set 
forth on their way to General Pollock's camp. 
On their way they met the English parties sent 
out to seek for them. 

There is a very different ending to the episode 
of the English captives in Bokhara. Colonel 
Stoddart, who had been sent to the Persian 
camp in the beginning of all these events to in- 
sist that Persia must desist from the siege of 
Herat, was sent subsequently on a mission to 
the Ameer of Bokhara. The Ameer threw 
Stoddart into prison. Captain Conolly under- 
took to endeavor to effect the liberation of Stod- 
dart, hut could only succeed in sharing his suf- 
ferings, and at last his fate. Nothing was done 
to obtain their release beyond diplomatic efforts, 
and appeals to the magnanimity of the Ameer 
which had not any particular effect. Dr. Wolff, 
the celebrated traveller and missionary, after- 
wards undertook an expedition of his own in the 
hope of saving the unfortunate captives; but 
he only reached Bokhara in time to hear that 
they had been put to death. The moment and 
actual manner of their death cannot be known 
to positive certainty, but there is little doubt 
they were executed on the same day by the or- 
ders of the Ameer. 

On October 1, 1842, exactly four years since 
Lord Auckland's proclamation announcing and 
justifying the intervention to restore Shah Soo- 
jah, Lord Ellenborough issued another procla- 
mation announcing the complete failure and 
the revocation of the policy of his predecessor. 
Lord Ellenborough declared that " to force a 
sovereign upon a reluctant people would be as 
inconsistent with the policy as it is with the 
principles of the British Government;" that 
therefore they would recognize any government 
approved by the Afghans themselves ; that the 
British arms would be withdrawn from Afghan- 
istan, and that the Government of India would 
remain "content with the limit nature appears 
to have assigned to its empire." Dost Mahom- 
ed was released from his captivity, and before 
long was ruler of Cabul once again. Thus end- 
ed the story of our expedition to reorganize the 
internal condition of Afghanistan. 

CHAPTER V. 
peel's administration. 
"The year 1843," said O'Connell, "is and 
shall be the great Repeal year." In the year 
1843, at all events, O'Connell was by far the 
most prominent politician in these countries 
who had never been in office. O'Connell was a 
thorough Celt. He represented all the impul- 
siveness, the quick-changing emotions, the pas- 
sionate, exaggerated loves and hatreds, the heed- 
lessness of statement, the tendency to confound 
impressions with facts, the ebullient humor — all 
the other qualities that are especially character- 
istic of the Celt. As the orator of a popular 
assembly, as the orator of a monster meeting, 
he probably never had an equal in these coun- 
tries. He had many of the physical endow- 
ments that are especially favorable to success in 
such a sphere. He had a herculean frame, a 
stately presence, a face capable of expressing 
easily and effectively the most rapid alternations 
of mood, and a voice which all hearers admit to 
have been almost unrivalled for strength and 
sweetness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, its 
music have been described in words of positive 
rapture by men who detested O'Connell. and 
who would rather if they could have denied to 
him any claim on public attention, even in the 
matter of voice. He spoke without studied 
preparation, and of course had all the defects of 
such a style. He fell into repetition and into 
carelessness of construction ; he was hurried 
away into exaggeration and sometimes into 
mere bombast. But he had all the peculiar 
success, too, which rewards the orator who can 
speak without preparation. He always spoke 
right to the hearts of his hearers. He entered 
the House of Commons when he was nearly 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



16 



fifty-four years of age. Most persons supposed 
that the style of speaking he had formed, first 
in addressing juries, and next in rousing Irish 
mobs, must cause his failure when he came to 
appeal to the unsympathetic and fastidious 
House of Commons. But it is certain that 
O'Connell became one of the most successful 
Parliamentary orators of his time. 

He had borne the leading part in carrying 
Catholic Emancipation. It must in a short time 
have been carried if O'Connell had never lived. 
But it was carried just then by virtue of O'Con- 
nell's bold agitation. O'Connell and the Irish 
people saw that Catholic Emancipation had been 
yielded to pressure rather than to justice ; it is 
not wonderful if they thought that pressure 
might prevail as well in the matter of Repeal. 
Nor is there any reason to doubt that O'Connell 
himself believed in the possibility of accomplish- 
ing his purpose. We are apt now to think of 
the Union between England and Ireland as of 
time-honored endurance. It had been scarcely 
thirty years in existence when O'Connell entered 
Parliament. To O'Connell it appeared simply 
as a modern innovation, which had nothing to be 
said for it except that a majority of Englishmen 
had by threats and bribery forced it on a major- 
ity of Irishmen. He perceived the possibility 
of forming a powerful party in Parliament, 
which would be free to co-operate with all Eng- 
lish parties without coalescing with any, and 
might thus turn the balance of factions and de- 
cide the fate of Ministries. lie believed that, 
under a constitutional Government, the will of 
four-fifths of a nation, if peacefully, persevering- 
ly, and energetically expressed, must sooner or 
later be triumphant. 

In many respects O'Connell differed from 
more modern Irish Nationalists. He was a 
thorough Liberal. He was a devoted opponent 
of negro slavery; he was a staunch Free-trad- 
er; he was a friend of popular education; he 
was an enemy to all excess ; he was opposed to 
strikes ; he was an advocate of religious equality 
everywhere. He preached the doctrine of con- 
stitutional agitation strictly, and declared that 
no political reform was worth the shedding of 
one drop of blood. It may be asked how it 
came about that, with all these excellent attri- 
butes, which all critics now allow to him, 
O'Connell was so detested by the vast majority 
of the English people. One reason undoubted- 
ly is that O'Connell deliberately revived and 
worked up for his political purposes the almost 
extinct national hatreds of Celt and Saxon. As 
a phrase of political controversy, he may be said 
to have invented the word "Saxon." In the 
common opinion of Englishmen all the evils of 
Ireland, all the troubles, attaching to the connec- 
tion between the two countries, had arisen from 
this unmitigated, rankling hatred of Celt for 
Saxon. Yet O'Connell was in no sense a rev- 
olutionist. Of the Irish rebels of '98 he spoke 
with as savage an intolerance as the narrowest 
English Tories could show in speaking of him- 
self. The Tones, and Emmets, and Fitzgeralds, 
whom so many of the Irish people adored, were 
in O'Connell's eyes, and in his words, only "a 
gang of miscreants." His theory and his policy 
were that Ireland was to be saved by a dictator- 
ship intrusted to himself. 

He had a Parliamentary system by means of 
which he proposed to approach more directly the 
question of Repeal of the Union. He got seats 
in the House of Commons for a number of his 
sons, his nephews, and his sworn retainers. He 
had an almost supreme control over the Irish 
constituencies, and whenever a vacancy took 
place he sent down a Repeal candidate to con- 
test it. He always inculcated and insisted on 
the necessity of order and peace. Indeed, as 
he proposed to cairy on his agitation altogether 
by the help of the bishops and the priests, it was 
not possible for him, even were he so inclined, to 
conduct it on any other than peaceful principles. 
"The man who commits a crime gives strength 
to the enemy," was a maxim which he was never 
weary of impressing upon his followers. The 
Temperance movement set on foot with such re- 
markable and sudden success by Father Mathew 
was at once turned to account bv O'Connell. 



He called upon his followers to join it, and was 
always boasting of his "noble army of Teetotal- 
ers." He started that system of agitation by 
monster meeting which has since his time been 
regularly established among us as a principal 
part of all political organization for a definite 
purpose. He founded in Dublin a Repeal As- 
sociation, which met on Burgh Quay, in a place 
which he styled Conciliation Hall. The famous 
monster meetings were usually held on a Sunday, 
on some open spot, mostly selected for its historic 
fame, and with all the picturesque surroundings 
of hill and stream. From the dawn of the sum- 
mer day the Repealers were thronging to the 
scene of the meeting. They came from all parts 
of the neighboring country for miles and miles. 
They were commonly marshalled and guided by 
their parish priests. They all attended the ser- 
vices of their Church before the meeting began. 

O'Connell himself, it is needless to saj', was 
always the great orator of the day. His mag- 
nificent voice enabled him to do what no genius 
and no eloquence less aptly endowed could have 
done. He could send his lightest word thrilling 
to the extreme of the vast concourse of people 
whom he desired to move. He swayed them 
with the magic of an absolute control. He un- 
derstood all the moods of his people ; to address 
himself to them came naturally to him. He made 
them roar with laughter ; he made them weep ; 
he made them thrill with indignation. As the 
shadow runs over a field, so the impression of 
his varying eloquence ran over the assemblage. 
He commanded the emotions of his hearers as 
a consummate conductor sways the energies of 
his orchestra. 

The crowds who attended the monster meet- 
ings came in a sort of military order and with 
a certain parade of military discipline. At the 
meeting held on the Ilill of Tara, where O'Con- 
nell stood beside the stone said to have been used 
for the coronation of the ancient monarchs of 
Ireland, it is declared on the authority of careful 
and unsympathetic witnesses that a quarter of a 
million of people must have been present. The 
Government naturally felt that there was a very 
considerable danger in the massing together of' 
such vast crowds of men in something like mili- 
tary array, and under the absolute leadership of 
one man, who openly avowed that he had called 
them together to show England what was the 
strength her statesmen would have to fear if they 
continued to deny Repeal to his demand. The 
Government at last resolved to interfere. A 
meeting was announced to be held at Clontarf 
on Sunday, October 8, 1813. Clontarf is near 
Dublin, and is famous in Irish history as the 
scene of a great victory of the Irish over their 
Danish invaders. It was intended that this 
meeting should surpass in numbers and in ear- 
nestness the assemblage at Tara. On the very 
day before the 8th the Lord Lieutenant issued a 
proclamation prohibiting the meeting, as "calcu- 
lated to excite reasonable and well-grounded ap- 
prehension," in that its object was " to accom- 
plish alterations in the laws and constitution of 
the realm by intimidation and the demonstration 
of physical force." O'Connell's power over the 
people was never shown more effectively than in 
the control which at that critical moment he was 
still able to exercise. O'Connell declared that 
the orders of the Lord Lieutenant must be obeyed ; 
that the meeting must not take place; and that 
the people must return to their homes. The 
"uncrowned king," ss some of his admirers 
loved to call him, was obeyed, and no meeting 
was held. 

From that moment, however, the great power 
of the Repeal agitation was gone. It was now 
made clear that he did not intend to have re- 
sort to force. The young and fiery followers of 
the great agitator renounced all faith in him. 
All the imposing demonstrations of physical 
strength lost their value when it was made posi- 
tively known that they were only demonstra- 
tions, and that nothing was ever to come of 
them. 

The Government at once proceeded to the 
prosecution of O'Connell and some of his princi- 
pal associates. They were charged with con- 
spiring to raise and excite disaffection among 



her Majesty's subjects, to excite them to hatred 
and contempt of the Government and Constitu- 
tion of the realm. The jury found O'Connell 
guilty, along with most of his associates, and he 
was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment 
and a fine of i'2000. The others received light- 
er sentences. O'Connell appealed to the House 
of Lords against the sentence. In the mean 
time he issued a proclamation to the Irish people 
commanding them to keep perfectly quiet and 
not to commit any offence against the law. 
"Every man," said one of his proclamations, 
" who is guilty of the slightest breach of the 
peace is an enemy of me and of Ireland." The 
Irish people took him at his word and remained 
perfectly quiet. 

O'Connell and his principal associates were 
committed to Richmond Prison, in Dublin. 
The trial had been delayed in various ways, and 
the sentence was not pronounced until May 21, 
1844. _ The appeal to the House of Lords was 
heard in the following September, the judgment 
was reversed, and O'Connell and his associates 
were set at liberty. There was all manner of na- 
tional rejoicing when the decision of the House 
of Lords set O'Connell and his fellow-prisoners 
free. There were illuminations and banquets 
and meetings and triumphal processions, renewed 
declarations of allegiance to the great leader, 
and renewed protestations on his part that Re- 
peal was coming. But his reign was over. His 
health broke down more and more every day. 
He became seized with a profound melancholy. 
Only one desire seemed left to him, the desire to 
close his stormy career in Rome. He longed to 
lie down in the shadow of the dome of St. 
Peter's and rest there, and there die. His youth 
had been wild itt more ways than one, and he 
had long been under the influence of a profound 
penitence. He had killed a man in a duel, and 
was through all his after-life haunted by regret 
for the deed, although it was really forced on 
him, and he had acted only as any other man of 
his time would have acted in such conditions. 
But now in his old and sinking days all the 
errors of his youth and his strong manhood came 
back upon him, and he longed to steep the pain- 
ful memories in the sacred influences of Rome. 
He hurried to Italy. He reached Genoa. His 
strength wholly failed him there, and he died, 
still far from Rome, on May 15, 1847. 

Some important steps in the progress of what 
may be described as social legislation are part of 
the history of Peel's Government. The Act of 
Parliament which prohibited absolutely the em- 
ployment of women and girls in mines and col- 
lieries was rendered unavoidable by the fearful 
exposures made through the instrumentality of 
a Commission appointed to inquire into" the 
whole subject. This Commission was appointed 
on the motion of the then Lord Ashley, since 
better known as the Earl of Shaftesbury, a man 
who during the whole of a long career has al- 
ways devoted himself to the task of brightening 
the lives and lightening the burdens of the 
working-classes and the poor. In some of the 
coal-mines women were literally employed as 
beasts of burden. Lord Ashley had the happi- 
ness and the honor of putting a stop to this in- 
famous sort of labor forever by the Act of 1812, 
which declared that, after a certain limited per- 
iod, no woman or girl whatever should be em- 
ployed iit mines and collieries. 

Lord Ashley was less completely successful 
in his endeavor to secure a ten hours' limitation 
for the daily labor of women and young persons 
in factories. By a vigorous annual agitation on 
the general subject of factory labor he brought 
the Government up to the point of undertaking 
legislation on the subject. They first introduced 
a bill which combined a limitation of the labor 
of children in factories with a plan for compul- 
sory education among the children. Afterwards 
the Government brought in another hill, which 
became in the end the Factories Act of 1811. 
It was during the passing of this measure that 
Lord Ashley tried unsuccessfully to introduce 
his ten hours' limit. The hill diminished the 
working hours of children under thirteen years 
of age, and fixed them at six and a half hours 
each day ; extended somewhat the time during 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



which they were to be under daily instruction, 
aud did a good many other useful and whole- 
some things. The principle of legislative inter- 
ference to protect youthful workers in factories 
had been already established by the Act of 1833 ; 
and Lord Ashley's agitation only obtained for it 
a somewhat extended application. It has since 
that time again and again received farther ex- 
tension. 

Many other things done by Sir Robert Peel's 
Government aroused bitter controversy and agi- 
tation. There was, for example, the grant to the 
Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, a college 
for the education specially of }*oung men who 
sought to enter the ranks of the priesthood. The 
grant was not a new thing. Since before t"he 
Act of Union a grant had been made for the col- 
lege. The Government of Sir Robert Peel only 
proposed to make that which was insufficient 
sufficient ; to enable the college to be kept in re- 
pair and to accomplish the purpose for which it 
was founded. Yet the Ministerial proposition 
called up a very tempest of clamorous bigotry 
all over the country. Peel carried his measure, 
although nearly half his own party in the House 
of Commons voted against it on the second 
reading. 

There was objection within the Ministry, as well 
as without, to the Maynooth grant. Mr. Glad- 
stone, who had been doing admirable work, first 
as Vice-president, and afterwards as President, 
of the Board of Trade, resigned his office because 
of this proposal. He acted, perhaps, with a too 
sensitive chivalry. He had written a work on 
the relations of Church and State, and he did 
not think the views expressed in that book left 
him free to co-operate in the Ministerial meas- 
ure. Some staid politicians were shocked, many 
smiled, not a few sneered. The public in gener- 
al applauded the spirit of disinterestedness which 
dictated the young statesman's act. 

Mr. Gladstone, however, supported by voice 
and vote the Queen's Colleges scheme, another 
of Peel's measures which aroused much clamor. 
The proposal of the Government was to establish 
in Ireland three colleges, one in Cork, the second 
in Belfast, and the third in Galway, and to affili- 
ate these to a new university to be called the 
"Queen's University in Ireland.'' The teaching 
in these colleges was to be purely secular. Noth- 
ing could be more admirable than the intentions 
of Peel and his colleagues. Peel carried his 
measure : but from both sides of the House and 
from the extreme party in each Church came an 
efqually vigorous denunciation of the proposal to 
separate secular from religious education. 

One small instalment of justice to a much-in- 
jured and long-suft'ering religious body was ac- 
complished without any trouble by Sir Robert 
Peel's Government. This was the bill for re- 
moving the test by which Jews were excluded 
from certain municipal offices. A Jew might 
be high-sheriff of a county, or Sheriff of Lon- 
don, but, with an inconsistency which was as ri- 
diculous as it was narrow-minded, he was pre- 
vented from becoming a mayor, an alderman, or 
even a member of the Common Council. The 
oath which had to be taken included the words, 
"on the true faith of a Christian." Lord Lynd- 
hurst, the Lord Chancellor, introduced a measure 
to get rid of this absurd anomaly ; and the House 
of Lords, which had firmly rejected similar pro- 
posals of relief before, passed it without any dif- 
ficulty. It was of course passed by the House of 
Commons, which had done its best to introduce 
the reform in previous sessions, and without suc- 
cess. 

The Bank Charter Act, separating the issue 
from the banking department of the Bank of 
England, limiting the issue of notes to a fixed 
amount of securities, requiring the whole of the 
farther circulation to be on a basis of bullion, 
and prohibiting the formation of any new banks 
of issue, is a characteristic and an important 
measure of Peel's Government. To Peel, too, 
we owe the establishment of the income-tax on 
its present basis — a doubtful boon. The copy- 
right question was at least advanced a stage. 
Railways were regulated. The railway mania 
and railway panic also belong to this active peri- 
od. The country went wild with railway specu- 



lation. The vulgar and flashy successes of one 
or two lucky adventurers turned the heads of the 
whole community. For a time it seemed to be 
a national article of faith that the capacity of the 
country to absorb new railway schemes and make 
them profitable was unlimited, aud that to make 
a fortune one had only to take shares in any- 
thing. 

xvn odd feature of the time was the outbreak 
of what were called the Rebecca riots in Wales. 
These riots arose out of the anger and impatience 
of fhe people at the great increase of toll-bars 
and tolls on the public roads. Some one, it was 
supposed, had hit upon a passage in Genesis 
which supplied a motto for their grievance and 
their complaint. "And they blessed Rebekah, 
and said unto her ... let thy seed possess the 
gate of those which hate them." They set about 
accordingly to possess very effectually the gates 
of those which hated them. Mobs, led by men 
in women's clothes, assembled every night, de- 
stroyed turnpikes, and dispersed. Blood was 
shed in conflicts with police and soldiers. At 
last the Government succeeded in putting down 
the riots, and had the wisdom to appoint a Com- 
mission to inquire into the cause of so much dis- 
turbance; and the Commission, as will readily 
be imagined, found that there were genuine griev- 
ances at the bottom of the popular excitement. 
The farmers and the laborers were poor; the 
tolls were seriously oppressive. The Govern- 
ment dealt lightly with most of the rioters who 
had been captured, and introduced measures 
which removed the most serious grievances. 

Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, 
brought himself and the Government into some 
trouble by authorizing the Post-office to open 
some of the letters of Joseph Mazzini, the Ital- 
ian exile. The public excitement was at first 
very great; but it soon subsided. The reports 
of Parliamentary committees appointed by the 
two Houses showed that all Governments had 
exercised the right, but naturally with decreas- 
ing frequency and greater caution of late years ; 
and that there was no chance now of its being 
seriously abused. One remark it is right to 
make. An exile is sheltered in a country like 
England on the assumption that he does not 
involve her in responsibility and danger by using 
her protection as a shield behind which to con- 
trive plots and organize insurrections against for- 
eign Governments. It is certain that Mazzini 
did make use of the shelter England gave him 
for such a purpose. It would in the end be to 
the heavy injury of all fugitives from despotic 
rule if to shelter them brought such conse- 
quences on the countries that offered them a 
home. 

The Peel Administration had wars of its own. 
Scinde was annexed by Lord Ellenborough in 
consequence of the disputes which had arisen 
between us and the Ameers, whom we accused 
of having broken faith with us. Peel and his 
colleagues- accepted the annexation. None of 
them liked it ; but none saw how it could be un- 
done. Later on the Sikhs invaded our territory 
by crossing the Sutlej in great force. Sir Hugh 
Gough, afterwards Lord Gough, fought several 
fierce battles with them before he could conquer 
them ; and even then they were only conquered 
for the time. 

We were at one moment apparently on the 
very verge of what must have proved a far more 
serious war much nearer home, in consequence 
of the dispute that arose between this country 
and Prance about Tahiti and Queen Pomare. 
Queen Pomare was sovereign of the island of 
Tahiti, in the South Pacific, the Otaheite of Cap- 
tain Cook. She had been induced or compelled 
to put herself and her dominion under the pro- 
tection of Prance — a step which was highly dis- 
pleasing to her subjects. Some ill-feeling towards 
the French residents of the island was shown ; 
and the French admiral, who had induced or 
compelled the queen to put herself under French 
protection, now suddenly appeared off the coast, 
and called on her to hoist the French flag above 
her own. She refused ; and he instantly effected 
a landing on the island, pulled down her flag, 
raised that of France in its place, and proclaimed 
that the island was French territory. His act 



was at once disavowed by the French Govern- 
ment. But Queen Pomare had appealed to the 
Queen of England for assistance. While the 
more hot-headed on both sides of the English 
Channel were snarling at each other, the diffi- 
cult}' was immensely complicated by the French 
commandant's seizure of a missionary named 
Pritchard, who had been our consul in the island 
up to the deposition of Pomare. Pritchard was 
flung into prison, and only released to be ex- 
pelled from the island. He came home to Eng- 
land with his story, and his arrival was the signal 
for an outburst of indignation all over the coun- 
try. In the end the French Government agreed 
to compensate Pritchard for his sufferings and 
losses. Queen Pomare was nominally restored 
to power, but the French protection proved as 
stringent as if it were a sovereign rule. She 
might as well have pulled down her flag for all 
the sovereign right it secured to her. She died 
thirty-four years after, and her death recalled to 
the memory of the English public the long-for- 
gotten fact she had once so nearly been the cause 
of a war between England and France. 

The Ashburton Treaty and the Oregon Treaty 
belong alike to the history of Peel's Administra- 
tion. The Ashburton Treaty bears date August 
9, 1S42, and arranges finally the north-western 
boundary between the British Provinces of North 
America and the United States. More than once 
the dispute about the boundary-line in the Oregon 
region had very nearly become an occasion for 
war between England and the United States. 
On June 15, 1816, the Oregon Treaty settled 
the question for that time at least. Vancouver's 
Island remained to Great Britain, and the free 
navigation of the Columbia River was secured. 
The question came up again for discussion in 
1871, and was finally settled by the arbitration 
of the Emperor of Germany. 

During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of 
the famous Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. 
He sailed on the expedition which was doomed 
to be his last, on May 26, 1845, with his two 
vessels, Erebus and Terror. Not much more is 
heard of him as among the living. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE ANTI-COBN LAW LEAGUE. 

The famous Corn Law of 1815 was a copy 
of the Corn Law of 1670. The former measure 
imposed a duty on the importation of foreign 
grain which amounted to prohibition. Wheat 
might be exported upon the payment of one 
shilling per quarter Customs duty ; but importa- 
tion was practically prohibited until the price of 
wheat had reached eighty shillings a quarter. 
The Corn Law of 1815 was hurried through 
Parliament, absolutely closing the ports against 
the importation of foreign grain until the price 
of our home-grown grain had reached the magic 
figure of eighty shillings a quarter. It was har- 
ried through, despite the most earnest petitions 
from the commercial and manufacturing classes. 
A great deal of popular disturbance attended 
the passing of the measure. There were riots 
in London, and in many parts of the country. 
After the Corn Law of 1815, thus ominously in- 
troduced, there were Sliding Scale Acts, having 
for their business to establish a varying system 
of duty, so that, according as the price of home- 
produced wheat rose to a certain height, the duty 
on imported wheat sank in proportion. The 
principle of all these measures was the same. 
It was founded on the assumption that the corn 
grew for the benefit of the grower first of all ; 
and that until he had been secured in a hand- 
some profit the public at large had no right to 
any reduction in the cost of food. When the 
harvest was a good one, and the golden grain 
was plenty, then the soul of the grower was 
afraid, and he called out to Parliament to pro- 
tect him against the calamity of having to sell 
his corn any cheaper than in years of famine. 
He did not see all the time that if the prosperity 
of the country in general was enhanced, he too 
must come to benefit by it. 

A movement against the Corn Laws began in 
London. An Anti-Corn Law Association on 
a small scale was formed. Its list of members 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



17 



bore the names of more than twenty members 
■of Parliament, and for a time the society had a 
look of vigor about it. It came to nothing, 
however. London has never been found an ef- 
fective nursery of agitation. It has hardly ever 
made or represented thoroughly the public opin- 
ion of England during any great crisis. A new 
centre of operations had to be sought, and in the 
year 1838 a meeting was held in Manchester to 
consider measures necessary to be adopted for 
bringing about the complete repeal of the obnox- 
ious Laws. The Manchester Chamber of Com- 
merce adopted a petition to Parliament against 
the Corn Laws. The Anti-Corn Law agitation 
had been fairly launched. From that time it 
grew and grew in importance and strength. 
Meetings were held in various towns of England 
and Scotland. Associations were formed every- 
where to co-operate with the movement which 
had its head-quarters in Manchester. 

The nominal leader of the Free-trade party 
in Parliament was for many years Mr. Charles 
Villiers, a man of aristocratic family and sur- 
roundings, of remarkable ability, and of the 
steadiest fidelity to the cause he had under- 
taken. Mr. Villiers brought forward for several 
successive sessions in the House of Commons a 
motion in favor of the total repeal of the Corn 
Laws. His eloquence and argumentative power 
served the great purpose of drawing the atten- 
tion of the country to the whole question, and 
making converts to the principle he advocated. 
But Mr. Villiers might have gone on for all his 
life dividing the House of Commons on the ques- 
tion of Free-trade, without getting much nearer 
his object, if it were not for the manner in which 
the cause was taken up by the country, and more 
particularly by the great manufacturing towns 
of the North. Until the passing of Lord Grey's 
Reform Bill these towns had no representation 
in Parliament. They seemed destined after that 
event to make up for their long exclusion from 
representative influence by taking the govern- 
ment of the country into their own hands. Man- 
chester, Birmingham, and Leeds are no whit 
less important to the life of the nation now than 
they were before Free-trade. But their suprem- 
acy does not exist now as it did then. At that 
time it was town against country ; Manchester 
representing the town, and the whole Conserva- 
tive (at one period almost the whole land-own- 
ing) body representing the country. With the 
Manchester school, as it was called, began a 
new kind of popular agitation. Up to that time 
agitation meant appeal to passion, and lived by 
provoking passion. The Manchester school in- 
troduced the agitation which appealed to reason 
and argument only ; which stirred men's hearts 
with figures of arithmetic rather than figures of 
speech, and which converted mob meetings to 
political economy. 

The real leader of the movement was Mr. 
Richard Cobden. Mr. Cobden was a man be- 
longing to the yeoman class. He had received 
but a moderate education. His father dying 
while the great Free-trader was still young, 
Richard Cobden was taken in charge by an uncle, 
who had a wholesale warehouse in the City of 
London, and who gave him employment there. 
Cobden afterwards became a partner in a Man- 
chester printed cotton factory ; and he travelled 
occasionally on the commercial business of this 
establishment. He had a great liking for travel, 
but not by any means as the ordinary tourist 
travels ; the interest of Cobden was not in sce- 
nery, or in art, or in ruins, but in men. He stud- 
ied the condition of countries with a view to the 
manner in which it affected the men and women 
of the present, and through them was likely to 
affect the future. On everything that he saw he 
turned a quick and intelligent eye, and he saw 
.for himself and thought for himself. Wherever 
he went he wanted to learn something. He had 
in abundance that peculiar faculty which some 
great men of widely different stamp from him 
and from each other have possessed, the faculty 
which exacts from every one with whom the 
owner comes into contact some contribution to 
his stock of information and to his advantage. 
Cobden could learn something from everybody. 
He travelled very widely, for a time when trav- 



elling was more difficult work than it is at pres- 
ent. He made himself familiar with most of the 
countries of Europe, with many parts of the East, 
and, what was then a rarer accomplishment, 
with the United States and Canada. He studied 
these countries and visited many of them again, 
to compare early with later impressions. When 
he was about thirty years of age he began to ac- 
quire a certain reputation as the author of pam- 
phlets directed against some of the pet doctrines 
of old-fashioned statesmanship — the balance of 
power in Europe; the necessity of maintaining 
a State Church in Ireland ; the importance of 
allowing no European quarrel to go on without 
England's intervention ; and similar dogmas. 
The tongue, however, was his best weapon. If 
oratory were a business and not an art — that is, 
if its test were its success rather than its form — 
then it might be contended reasonably enough 
that Mr. Cobden was one of the greatest orators 
England has ever known. Nothing could ex- 
ceed the persuasiveness of his style. His man- 
ner was simple, sweet, and earnest. It was trans- 
parently sincere. The light of its convictions 
shone all through it. It aimed at the reason and 
the judgment of the listener, and seemed to be 
convincing him to his own interest against his 
prejudices. Cobden's style was almost exclu- 
sively conversational, but he had a clear, well- 
toned voice, with a quiet, unassuming power in 
it which enabled him to make his words heard 
distinctly and without effort all through the great 
meetings he had often to address. His speeches 
were full of variety. He illustrated every argu- 
ment by something drawn from his personal ob- 
servation or from reading, and his illustrations 
were always striking, appropriate, and interesting. 
He had a large amount of bright and winning 
humor, and he spoke the simplest and purest 
English. He never used an unnecessary sen- 
tence or failed for a single moment to make his 
meaning clear. Many strong opponents of Mr. 
Cobden's opinions confessed even during his life- 
time that they sometimes found with dismay 
their most cherished convictions crumbling away 
beneath his flow of easy argument. In the 
stormy times of national passion Mr. Cobden 
was less powerful. The apostle of common- 
sense and fair dealing, he had no sympathy with 
the passions of men ; he did not understand them ; 
they passed for nothing in his calculations. His 
judgment of men and of nations was based far 
too much on his knowledge of his own motives 
and character. He knew that in any given case 
he could always trust himself to act the part of a 
just and prudent man ; and he assumed that all 
the world could be governed by the rides of pru- 
dence and of equity. He cared little or nothing 
for mere sentiments. Even where these had 
their root in some human tendency that was no- 
ble in itself, he did not reverence them if they 
seemed to stand in the way of men's acting peace- 
fully and prudently. Thus he never represented 
more than half the English character. He was 
always out of sympathy with his countrymen on 
some great political question. But he seemed 
as if he were designed by Nature to conduct to 
such success an agitation as that against the 
Corn Laws. 

Mr. Cobden found some colleagues who were 
worthy of him. His chief companion in the cam- 
paign was Mr. Bright. It is doubtful whether 
English public life has ever produced a man who 
possessed more of the qualifications of a great 
orator than Mr. Bright. He had a command- 
ing presence, a massive figure, a large head, a 
handsome and expressive face. His voice was 
powerful, resonant, clear, with a peculiar vibra- 
tion in it which lent unspeakable effect to any 
passages of pathos or of scorn. His style of 
speaking was pure to austerity ; it was stripped 
of all superfluous ornament. It never gushed 
or foamed. It never allowed itself to be mas- 
tered by passion. The first peculiarity that 
struck the listener was its superb self-restraint. 
The orator at his most powerful passages ap- 
peared as if he were rather keeping in his 
strength than taxing it with effort. His voice 
was for the most part calm and measured ; he 
hardly ever indulged in much gesticulation. 
He never, under the pressure of whatever emo- 
2 



tion, shouted or stormed. The fire of his elo- 
quence was a white-heat, intense, consuming, but 
never sparkling or sputtering. He had an ad- 
mirable gift of humor and a keen ironical power. 
He had read few books, but of those he read he 
was a master. The English Bible and Milton 
were his chief studies. Bright was a man of the 
middle class. His family were Quakers of a 
somewhat austere mould. They were manu- 
facturers of carpets in Rochdale, Lancashire, 
and had made considerable money in their busi-_ 
ness. 

There was something positively romantic about 
the mutual attachment of these two men, who 
worked together in the closest brotherhood, who 
loved each other as not all brothers do, who 
were associated so closely in the public mind 
that until Cobden's death the name of one was 
scarcely ever mentioned without that of the other. 
Each led a noble life ; each was in his own way 
a man of genius ; each was simple and strong. 
Rivalry between them would have been impossi- 
ble, although they were every day being com- 
pared and contrasted by both friendly and un- 
friendly critics. Their gifts were admirably 
suited to make them powerful allies. Each had 
something that the other wanted. Bright had 
not Cobden's winning persuasiveness nor his sur- 
prising ease and force of argument. But Cob- 
den had not anything like his companion's ora- 
torical power. He had not the tones of scorn, 
of pathos, of humor, and of passion. The two 
together made a genuine power in the House of 
Commons and on the platform. 

These men .had many assistants and lieuten- 
ants well worthy to act with them and under 
them, such as Mr. W. J. Fox, for instance, a 
Unitarian minister of great popularity and re- 
markable eloquence, and Mr. Milner Gibson, 
who had been a Tory. 

The League, however successful as it might 
be throughout the country, had its great work 
to do in Parliament. Even after the change 
made in favor of manufacturing and middle 
class interests by the Reform Bill, the House of 
Commons was still composed, as to nine-tenths 
of its whole number, by representatives of the 
landlords. The entire House of Lords then 
was constituted of the owners of land. All 
tradition, all prestige, all the dignity of aristo- 
cratic institutions, seemed to be naturally ar- 
rayed against the nesv movement, conducted as 
it was by manufacturers and traders for the benefit 
seemingly of trade and those whom it employed. 
The artisan population, who might have been 
formidable as a disturbing element, were on the 
whole rather against the Free-traders than for 
them. Nearly all the great official leaders had 
to be converted to the doctrines of Free-trade. 

The Anti-Corn Law agitation introduced a 
game of politics into England which astonished 
and considerably discomfited steady-going poli- 
ticians. The League men did not profess to be 
bound by any indefeasible bond of allegiance to 
the Whig party. They were prepared to co- 
operate with any party whatever which would 
undertake to abolish the Corn Laws. 

It is a significant fact that the Anti-Corn 
Law League were not in the least discouraged 
by the accession of Sir Robert Peel to power. 
Their hopes seem rather to have gone up than 
gone down when the minister came into power 
whose adherents, unlike those of Lord John 
Russell, were absolutely against the very prin- 
ciple of Free -trade. It is certain that the 
League always regarded Sir Robert Peel as a 
Free-trader in heart; as one who fully admitted 
the principle of Free-trade, but who did not see 
his way just then to deprive the agricultural in- 
terest of the protection on which they had for so 
many years been allowed and encouraged to 
lean. 

The country party did not understand Sir 
Robert Peel as their opponents and his assuredly 
understood him. They did not at this time be- 
lieve in the possibility of any change. Free- 
trade was to them little more than an abstrac- 
tion. They did not much care who preached it 
out of Parliament. They were convinced that 
the state of things they saw around them when 
they were boys would continue to the end. Both 



18 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



parties in the House — that is to say, both of the 
parties from whom ministers were taken — alike 
set themselves against the introduction of any 
Free-trade measure. 

It would have been better if Sir Robert Peel 
had devoted himself more directly to preparing 
the minds of his followers for the fact that, pro- 
tection for gain having ceased to be tenable as 
an economic principle, would possibly some day- 
have to be given up as a practice. He might 
have been able to show them, as the erems have 
shown them since, that the introduction of free 
com would be a blessing to the population of 
England in general, and would do nothing but 
good for the landed interest as well. The influ- 
ence of Peel at that time, and indeed all through 
his administration up to the introduction of his 
Free-trade measures, was limitless, so far as his 
party were concerned. He could have done 
anything with them. But Peel, to begin with, 
was a reserved, cold, somewhat awkward man. 
He was not effusive ; he did not pour out his 
emotions and reveal all his changes of opinion 
in hursts of confidence even to his habitual asso- 
ciates. He brooded over these things in his own 
mind ; he gave such expression to them in open 
debate as any passing occasion seemed strictly 
to call for; and lie assumed, perhaps, that the 
gradual changes operating in his views when thus 
expressed were understood by his followers. 
Above all, it is probable that Peel himself did 
not see until almost the last moment that the 
time had actually come when the principle of 
Protection must give way to other and more 
weighty claims. • 

We see how the two great parties of the State 
stood with regard to this question of Free-trade. 
The Whigs were steadily gravitating towards it. 
Their leaders did not quite see their way to ac- 
cept it as a principle of practical statesmanship, 
but it was evident that their acceptance of it was 
only a question of time, and of no long time. 
The leader of the Tory party was being drawn 
day by day more in the same direction. Both 
leaders, Russell and Peel, had gone so far as to 
admit the general principle of F|ee-trade. Peel 
had contended that grain was in England a nec- 
essary exception ; Russell was not of opinion 
that, the time had come when it could be treated 
otherwise than as an exception. The Free-trade 
party was daily growing more and more power- 
ful with the country. This must soon have end- 
ed in one or other of the two great ruling parties 
forming an alliance with the Free-traders. But 
in the case of the Anti-Corn Law agitation an 
event over which political parties had no control 
intervened to spur the intent of the Prime-min- 
ister. Mr. Bright, many years after, when pro- 
nouncing the eulogy of his dead friend Cobden, 
described what happened in a fine sentence : 
"Famine itself, against which we had warred, 
joined us." In the autumn of 1845 the potato 
rot began in Ireland. 

The vast majority of the working population 
of Ireland were known to depend absolutely on 
the potato for subsistence. In the northern prov- 
ince, where the population were of Scotch extrac- 
tion, the oatmeal, the brose of their ancestors, 
still supplied the staple of their food ; but in the 
southern and western provinces a large proportion 
of the peasantry actually lived on the potato and 
the potato alone. In these districts whole genera- 
tions grew up, lived, married, and passed away, 
without having ever tasted flesh meat. It was 
evident, then, that a failure in the potato crop 
would be equivalent to a famine. The news 
came in the autumn of 1845 that the long contin- 
uance of sunless wet and cold had imperilled, if 
not already destroyed, the food of a people. 

The Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held hasty 
meetings closely following each other. People 
began to ask whether Parliament was about to 
be called together, and whether the Government 
had resolved on a bold policy. The Anti-Corn 
Law League were clamoring for the opening of 
the ports. The Prime -minister himself was 
strongly in favor of such a course. The Duke 
of Wellington and Lord Stanley, however, op- 
posed the idea of the opening of the ports, and 
the proposal fell through. The Cabinet merely 
resolved on appointing a Commission, consisting 



of the heads of departments in Ireland, to take 
some steps to guard against a sudden outbreak 
of famine, and the thought of an autumnal ses- 
sion was abandoned. 

The great cry all through Ireland was for the 
opening of the ports. The Mansion-house Re- 
lief Committee of Dublin issued a series of reso- 
lutions declaring that the potato disease was 
daily expanding more and more, and the docu- 
ment concluded with a denunciation of the Min- 
istry for not opening the ports, or calling Parlia- 
ment together before the usual time for its as- 
sembling. 

Two or three days after the issue of these res- 
olutions Lord John Russell wrote a letter from 
Edinburgh to his constituents, the electors of the 
City of London, announcing.his unqualified con- 
version to the principles of the Anti-Corn Law 
League. The failure of the potato crop was of 
course the immediate occasion of this letter. As 
Peel himself said, the letter "justified the con- 
clusion that the Whig party was prepared to 
unite with the Anti-Corn Law League in demand- 
ing the total repeal of the Corn Laws." Peel 
would not consent now to propose simply an 
opening of the ports. It would seem, he thought, 
a mere submission to accept the minimum of the 
terms ordered by the Whig leader. Sir Robert 
Peel therefore recommended to his Cabinet an 
early meeting of Parliament, with the view of 
bringing foward some measure equivalent to a 
speedy repeal of the Corn Laws. 

The recommendation was wise. It was, in- 
deed, indispensable. Yet neither Whigs nor To- 
ries appear to have formed a judgment because 
of facts or principles, but only in deference to 
the political necessities of the hour. The potato 
rot inspired the writing of Lord John Russell's 
letter; and Lord John Russell's letter inspired 
Sir Robert Peel with the conviction that some- 
thing must be done. Most of Peel's colleagues 
were inclined to go with him this time. A Cab- 
inet Council was held on November 25, almost 
immediately after the publication of Lord John 
Russell's letter. At that council Sir Robert Peel 
recommended the summoning of Parliament with 
a view to instant measures to combat the famine 
in Ireland, but with a view also to some announce- 
ment of legislation intended to pave the way for 
the repeal of the Corn Laws. Lord Stanley and 
the Duke of Buccleuch intimated to the Prime- 
minister that they could not be parties to any 
measure involving the ultimate repeal of the 
Corn Laws. Sir Robert Peel did not believe 
that he could carry out his project satisfactorily 
under such circumstances, and he therefore has- 
tened to tender his resignation to the Queen. 

Lord John Russell was sent for from Edin- 
burgh. His letter had, without any such purpose 
on his part, written him up as the man to take 
Sir Robert Peel's place. Lord John Russell came 
to London and did his best to cope with the 
many difficulties of the situation. His party 
were not very strong in the country, and they 
had not a majority in the House of Commons. 
Lord John Russell showed, even then, his char- 
acteristic courage. He resolved to form a Min- 
istry without a Parliamentary majority. He was 
not, however, fated to try the ordeal. Lord Grey, 
who was a few months before Lord Howick, and 
who had just succeeded to the title of his father 
(the stately Charles Earl Grey, the pupil of Fox, 
and chief of the Cabinet which passed the Reform 
Bill and abolished slavery) — Lord Grey felt a 
strong objection to the foreign policy of Lord 
Palmerston, and these two could not get on in 
one Ministry, as it was part of Lord John Rus- 
sell's plan that they should do. 

Lord John Russell found it impossible to form 
a Ministry. He signified his failure to the 
Queen. Probably, having done the best he 
could, he was not particularly distressed to find 
that his efforts were ineffectual. The Queen 
had to send for Sir Robert Peel to Windsor and 
tell him that she must require him to withdraw 
his resignation and to remain in her service. Sir 
Robert of course could only comply. The Duke 
of Buccleuch withdrew his opposition to the pol- 
icy which Peel was now to carry out ; but Lord 
Stanley remained firm. The place of the latter 
was taken, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, 



by Mr. Gladstone, who, however, curiously enough, 
remained without a seat in Parliament during 
the eventful session that was now to come. Mr. 
Gladstone had sat for the borough of Newark; 
but that borough being under the influence of 
the Duke of Newcastle, who had withdrawn his 
support from the Ministry, he did not invite re- 
election, but remained without a seat in the 
House of Commons for some months. Sir Rob- 
ert Peel then, to use his own words, resumed 
power " with greater means of rendering public 
service than I should have had if I had not relin- 
quished it." He felt, he said, "like a man re- 
stored to life after his funeral sermon had been 
preached." 

Parliament was summoned to meet in Janua- 
ry. In the mean time it was easily seen how the 
Protectionists and the Tories of the extreme or- 
der generally would regard the proposals .if Sir 
Robert Peel. Protectionist meetings were held 
in various parts of the country, and they were 
all but unanimous in condemning by anticipation 
the policy of the restored Premier. Resolutions 
were passed at many of these meetings express- 
ing an equal disbelief in the Prime-minister and 
in the famine. The utmost indignation was ex- 
pressed at the idea of there being any famine in 
prospect which could cause any departure from 
the principles which secured to the farmers a 
certain fixed price for their grain, or at least pre- 
vented the price from falling below what they 
considered a paying amount. 

Parliament met. The opening day was Jan- 
uary 22, 1846. There are few scenes more ani- 
mated and exciting than that presented by the 
House of Commons on some night when a great 
debate is expected, or when some momentous 
announcement is to be made. A common thrill 
seems to tremble all through the assembly as a 
breath of wind runs across the sea. The House 
appears for the moment to be one body per- 
vaded by one expectation. The Ministerial 
benches, the front benches of opposition, are 
occupied by the men of political renown and of 
historic name. The benches everywhere else 
are crowded to their utmost capacity. Mem- 
bers who cannot get seats — on such an occasion 
a goodly number — stand below the bar or have 
to dispose themselves along the side galleries. 
The celebrities are not confined to the Treasury 
benches or those of the leaders of opposition. 
Here and there, among the independent mem- 
bers and below the gangway on both sides, are 
seen men of influence and renown. The stran- 
gers' gallery, the Speaker's gallery, on such a 
night, are crowded to excess. The eye sur- 
veys the whole House and sees no vacant place. 
In the very hum of conversation that runs along 
the benches there is a tone of profound anx- 
iety. The minister who has to face that House 
and make the announcement for which all are 
waiting in a most feverish anxiety is a man to 
be envied by the ambitious. 

The Prime -minister went into long and la- 
bored explanations of the manner in which his 
mind had been brought into a change on the 
subject of Free-trade and Protection, and he 
gave exhaustive calculations to show that the 
reduction of duty was constantly followed by 
expansion of the revenue, and even a mainte- 
nance of high prices. The duties on glass, the 
duties on flax, the prices of salt pork and do- 
mestic lard, the contract price of salt beef for 
the navy — these and many other such topics 
were discussed at great length, and with elabo- 
rate fulness of detail, in the hearing of an eager 
House anxious only for that night to know 
whether or not the minister meant to introduce 
the principle of Free - trade. Peel, however, 
made it clear enough that he had become a 
complete convert to the doctrines of the Man- 
chester school, and that in his opinion the time 
had come when that protection he had taken 
office to maintain must forever be abandoned. 

The explanation was over. The House of 
Commons were left rather to infer than to un- 
derstand what the Government proposed to do. 
There appeared, therefore, nothing for it but to 
wait until the time should come for the formal 
announcement and the full discussion of the 
Government measures; Suddenly, however, a 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



I:j 



new and striking figure intervened in the lan- 
guishing debate, and tilled the House of Com- 
mons with a fresh life. There is not often to 
be found in our Parliamentary history an exam- 
ple like this of a sudden turn given to a whole 
career by a timely speech. The member who 
rose to comment on the explanation of Sir Rob- 
ert Peel had been for many years in the House 
of Commons. This was his tenth session. lie 
had spoken often in each session. He had made 
many bold attempts to win a name in Parlia- 
ment, and hitherto his political career had been 
simply a failure. From the hour when he spoke 
this speech it was one long, unbroken, brilliant 
success. 

CHAPTER VII. 

MR. DISRAELI. 

The speaker who rose into such sudden prom- 
inence and something like the position of a 
party leader was one of the most remarkable 
men" the politics of the reign have produced. 
Mi'. Disraeli entered the House of Commons as 
Conservative member for Maidstone in 1837. 
He was then about thirty- two years of age. 
He had previously made repeated and unsuc- 
cessful attempts to get a seat in Parliament. 
He began his political career as an advanced 
Liberal, and had described himself as one who 
desired to fight the battle of the people, and 
who was supported by neither of the aristocratic 
parties. He failed again and again, and appar- 
ently he began to think that it would be a wiser 
thing to look for the support of one or other of 
the aristocratic parties. He had before this given 
indications of remarkable literary capacity. His 
novel, "Vivian Grey," published when he was 
in his twenty-third year, was suffused with ex- 
travagance, affectation, and mere animal spirits, 
but it was full of the evidences of a fresh and 
brilliant ability. The son of a distinguished lit- 
erary man, Mr. Disraeli had, probably, at that 
time only a young literary man's notions of 
politics. It is not necessary to charge him with 
deliberate inconsistency because from having 
been a Radical of the most advanced views he 
became by an easy leap a romantic Tory. It is 
not likely that at the beginning of his career he 
had any very clear ideas in connection with the 
words Tory or Radical. When young Disraeli 
found that advanced Radicalism did not do 
much to get him into Parliament, he probably 
began to ask himself whether his Liberal con- 
victions were so deeply rooted as to call for the 
sacrifice of a career. He thought the question 
over, and doubtless found himself crystallizing 
fast into an advocate of the established order of 
things. 

No trace of the progress of conversion can be 
found in his speeches or his writings. It is not 
unreasonable to infer that he took up Radical- 
ism at the beginning because it looked the most 
picturesque and romantic thing to do, and that 
only as he found it fail to answer his personal 
object did it occur to him that he had, after all, 
more affinity with the cause of the country gen- 
tlemen. The reputation he had made for him- 
self before his going into Parliament was of a 
nature rather calculated to retard than to ad- 
vance a political career. He was looked upon 
almost universally as an eccentric and audacious 
adventurer, who was kept from being dangerous 
by the affectations and absurdities of his con- 
duct. He dressed in the extremest style of 
preposterous foppery ; he talked a blending of 
cynicism and sentiment ; he made the most reck- 
less statements; his boasting was almost out- 
rageous; his rhetoric of abuse was, even in that 
free-spoken time, astonishingly vigorous and un- 
restrained. Even then his literary efforts did 
not receive anything like the appreciation they 
have obtained since. At that time they were 
regarded rather as audacious whimsicalities, 
the fantastic freaks of a clever youth, than as 
genuine works of a certain kind of art. Even 
when he did get into the House of Commons, 
his first experience there was little calculated to 
give him much hope of success. Reading over 
his first speech now, it seems hard to understand 
why it should have excited so much laughter and 
derision ; why it should have called forth noth- 



ing but laughter and derision. It is a clever 
speech, full of point and odd conceits; very like 
in style and structure many of the speeches which 
in later years won for the same orator the ap- 
plause of the House of Commons. But Mr. 
Disraeli's reputation had preceded him into the 
House. The House was probably in a humor 
to find the speech ridiculous because the general 
impression was that the man himself was ridicu- 
lous. Mr. Disraeli's appearance, too, no doubt 
contributed something to the contemptuous opin- 
ion which was formed of him on his first attempt 
to address the assembly which he afterwards 
came to rule. He is described by an observer 
as having been "attired in a bottle-green frock- 
coat and a waistcoat of white, of the Dick 
Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited 
a net-work of glittering chains ; large fancy-pat- 
tern pantaloons, and a black tie, above which no 
shirt-collar was visible, completed the outward 
man. A countenance lividly pale, set out by a 
pair of intensely black eyes, and a broad but not 
very high forehead, overhung by clustering ring- 
lets of coal-black hair, which, combed away from 
the right temple, fell in bunches of well-oiled small 
ringlets over his left cheek." His manner was 
intensely theatric ; his gestures were wild and 
extravagant. Mr. Disraeli made not merely a 
failure, but even a ludicrous failure. One who 
heard the debate thus describes the manner in 
which, baffled by the persistent laughter and 
other interruptions of the noisy House, the ora- 
tor withdrew from the discussion defeated but 
not discouraged: "At last, losing his temper, 
which until now he had preserved in a wonder- 
ful manner, he paused in the midst of a sentence, 
and looking the Liberals indignantly in the face, 
raised his hands, and opening his mouth as 
widely as its dimensions would admit, said, in 
a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, ' I 
have begun several times many things, and I 
have often succeeded at last; ay, sir, and though 
I sit down now, the time will come when you 
will hear me.'" 

Disraeli was not in the least discouraged by 
his first failure. A few days after it he spoke 
again, and he spoke three or four times more dur- 
ing his first session. But he had earned some 
wisdom by rough experience, and he did not 
make his oratorical flights so long or so ambi- 
tious as that first attempt. Then he seemed 
after a while, as he grew more familiar with the 
House, to go in for being paradoxical ; for mak- 
ing himself always conspicuous; for taking up 
positions and expounding political creeds which 
other men would have avoided. It is very diffi- 
cult to get any clear idea of what his opinions 
were about this period of his career, if he had 
any political opinions at all. He spoke on sub- 
jects of which it was evident that he knew noth- 
ing, and sometimes he managed by the sheer 
force of a strong intelligence to discern the ab- 
surdity of economic sophistries which had baffled 
men of far greater experience, and which, indeed, 
to judge from his personal declarations and polit- 
ical conduct afterwards, he allowed before long 
to baffle and bewilder himself. More often, how- 
ever, he talked with a grandiose and oracular 
vagueness which seemed to imply that he alone 
of all men saw into the very heart of the ques- 
tion, but that he, of all men, must not yet reveal 
what he saw. Mr. Disraeli was at one period of 
his career so affected that he positively affected 
affectation. Yet he was a man of undoubted 
genius ; he had a spirit that never quailed under 
stress of any circumstances, however disheart- 
ening. 

For some time Mr. Disraeli then seemed re- 
solved to make himself remarkable— to be talked 
about. He succeeded admirably. He was talked 
about. All the political and satirical journals of 
the day had a great deal to say about him. He 
is not spoken of in terms of praise as a rule. 
Neither has he much praise to shower about him. 
Any one who looks back to the political contro- 
versies of that time will be astounded at the lan- 
guage which Mr. Disraeli addresses to bis oppo- 
nents of the Press,and which his opponents address 
to him. The duelling system survived then and 
for long after, and Mr. Disraeli always professed 
himself ready to sustain with his pistol anything 



that his lips might have given utterance to, even 
in the reckless heat of controversy. He kept 
himself well up to the level of his time in the 
calling of names and the swaggering. But he 
was making himself remarkable in political con- 
troversy as well. In the House of Commons he 
began to be regarded as a dangerous adversary 
in debate. He was wonderfully ready with re- 
tort and sarcasm. But during all the earlier 
part of his career he was thought of only as a 
free lance. He had praised Peel when Peel said 
something that suited him, or when to praise 
Peel seemed likely to wound some one else. 
But it was during the discussions on the abo- 
lition of the Corn Laws that he first rose to the 
fame of a great debater and a powerful Parlia- 
mentary orator. 

Hitherto he had wanted a cause to inspire and 
justify audacity, and on which to employ with effect 
his remarkable resources of sarcasm and rhetoric. 
Hitherto he had addressed an audience for the 
most part out of sympathy with him. Now he 
was about to become the spokesman of a large 
body of men who, chafing and almost choking 
with wrath, were not capable of speaking effec- 
tively for themselves. Mr. Disraeli did therefore 
the very wisest thing he could do when he launch- 
ed at once into a savage personal attack upon 
Sir Robert Peel. 

FYom that hour Mr. Disraeli was the real 
leader of the Tory squires ; from that moment 
his voice gave the word of command to the Tory 
party. Disraeli made his own career by the 
course he took on that memorable night, and 
he also made a new career for the Tory party. 

One immediate effect of the turn thus given 
by Disraeli's timely intervention in the debate 
was the formation of a Protection party in the 
House of Commons. The leadership of this per- 
ilous adventure was intrusted to Lord George 
Bentinck, a sporting nobleman of energetic 
character, great tenacity of purpose and convic- 
tion, and a not inconsiderable aptitude for poli- 
tics, which had hitherto had no opportunity for 
either exercising or displaying itself. Lord 
George Bentinck had sat in eight Parliaments 
without taking part in any great debate. When 
he was suddenly drawn into the leadership of the 
Protection party in the House of Commons he 
gave himself up to it entirely. He had at first 
only joined the party as one of its organizers ; but 
he showed himself in many respects well fitted 
for the leadership, and the choice of leaders was 
in any case very limited. When once he had 
accepted the position he was unwearying in his 
attention to its duties: and indeed up to the 
moment, of his sudden and premature death he 
never allowed himself any relaxation from the 
cares it imposed on him. Bentinck's abilities 
were hardly even of the second class ; and the 
amount of knowledge which he brought to bear 
on the questions he discussed with so much ear- 
nestness and energy was often and of necessity 
little better than mere cram. But in Parliament 
the essential qualities of a leader are not great 
powers of intellect. A man of cool head, good 
temper, firm will, and capacity for appreciating 
the serviceable qualities of other men, may, al- 
ways provided that he has high birth and great 
social influence, make a very successful leader, 
even though he be wanting altogether in the 
higher attributes of eloquence and statesmanship. 
Bentinck had patience, energy, good-humor, and 
considerable appreciation of the characters of 
men. If he had a bad voice, and was a poor 
speaker, he at least always spoke in full faith, and 
was only the more necessary to his party because 
he could honestly continue to believe in the old 
doctrines, no matter what political economy and 
bard facts might say to the contrary. 

The secession was, therefore, in full course of 
organization. On January 27 Sir Robert Peel 
came forward to explain his financial policy. 
His object was to abandon the sliding scale alto- 
gether ; but for the present he intended to im- 
pose a duty of ten shillings a quarter on corn 
when the price of it was under forty-eight shil- 
lings a quarter; to reduce that duty by one shil- 
ling for every shilling of rise in price until it 
reached fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the 
duty should fall to four shillings. This arrange- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



merit was, however, only to hold good for three 
years, at the end of which time protective duties 
on grain were to he wholly abandoned. Peel 
explained that he intended gradually to apply 
the principle of Free-trade to manufactures and 
every description of produce, bearing in mind 
the necessity of providing for the expenditure of 
the country, and of smoothing away some of the 
difficulties which a sudden withdrawal of protec- 
tion might cause. The differential duties on 
sugar, which were professedly intended to pro- 
tect the growers of free sugars against the com- 
petition of those who cultivated sugar by the use 
of slave labor, were to be diminished but not 
abolished. The duties on the importation of 
foreign cattle were to be at once removed. 

The proposals of the Ministry did not wholly 
satisfy the professed Free-traders. These latter 
would have enforced, if they could, an immediate 
application of the principle without the interval 
of three years, and the devices and shifts which 
were to be put in operation during that middle 
time. But, of course, they had no idea of not 
taking what they could get. 

The third reading of the bill passed the House 
of Commons, on May 15, by a majority of 98 
votes. The bill was at once sent up to the 
House of Lords, and, by means chiefly of the 
earnest advice of the Duke of Wellington, was 
carried through that House without much seri- 
ous opposition. But June 25, the day when the 
bill was read for a third time in the House of 
Lords, was a memorable day in the Parliamen- 
tary annals of England. It saw the fall of the 
Ministry who had carried to success the greatest 
piece of legislation that had been introduced 
since Lord Grey's Reform Bill. 

A Coercion Bill for Ireland was the measure 
which brought this catastrophe on the Govern- 
ment of Sir Robert Peel. While the Corn Bill 
was yet passing through the House of Commons 
the Government felt called upon, in consequence 
of the condition of crime and outrage in Ireland, 
to introduce a Coercion Bill. This placed them 
in a serious difficulty. All the Irish followers 
of O'Connell would of course oppose the coer- 
cion measure. The Whigs when out of office 
have usually made it a rule to oppose coercion 
hills, if they do not come accompanied with some 
promises of legislative reform and concession. 
The English Radical members, Mr. Cobden and 
his followers, were almost sure to oppose it. 
Under these circumstances, it seemed probable 
enough that if the Protectionists joined with the 
other opponents of the Coercion Bill, the Gov- 
ernment must be defeated. The temptation was 
too great. The fiercer Protectionists voted with 
the Free - traders, the Whigs, and the Irish 
Catholic and Liberal members, and, after a de- 
bate of much bitterness and passion, the division 
on the second reading of the Coercion Bill took 
place on Thursday, June 25, and the Ministry 
were left in a minority of 73. Some eighty of 
the Protectionists followed Lord George Ben- 
tinck into the lobby to vote against the bill, and 
their votes settled the question. Chance had 
put within their grasp the means of vengeance, 
and they had seized it, and made successful use 
of it. The Peel Ministry had fallen in its very 
hour of triumph. 

Three days after Sir Robert Peel announced 
his resignation of office. So great a success fol- 
lowed by so sudden and complete .a fall is hardly 
recorded in the Parliamentary history of our 
modern times. Peel had crushed O'Connell and 
carried Free-trade, and O'Connell and the Pro- 
tectionists had life enough yet to pull him down. 
He is as a conqueror who, having won the great 
victory of his life, is struck by a hostile hand 
in some by-way as he passes home to enjoy his 
triumph. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

FAMINE AND POLITICAL TROUBLE. 

Lokd John Russell succeeded Sir Robert 
Peel as First Lord of the Treasury ; Lord Pal- 
merston became Foreign Secretary ; Sir Charles 
Wood was Chancellor of the Exchequer ; Lord 
Grey took charge of the Colonies ; and Sir 
George Grey was Home Secretary. Mr. Ma- 
caulay accepted the office of Paymaster-general, 



with a seat in the Cabinet, a distinction not usu- 
ally given to the occupant of that office. The 
Ministry was not particularly strong in adminis- 
trative talent. The Premier and the Foreign 
Secretary were the only members of the Cabinet 
who could be called statesmen of the first class ; 
and even Lord Palmerston had not as yet won 
more than a somewhat doubtful kind of fame, 
and was looked upon as a man quite as likely to 
do miscbief as good to any Ministry of which he 
might happen to form a part. Lord Grey then 
and since only succeeded somehow in missing 
the career of a leading statesman. He had great 
talents and some originality ; he was indepen- 
dent and bold. But his independence degenerat- 
ed too often into impracticability and even ec- 
centricity ; and he was, in fact, a politician 
with whom ordinary men could not work. Sir 
Charles Wood, the new Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer, had solid sense and excellent adminis- 
trative capacity, but he was about as bad a pub- 
lic speaker as ever addressed the House of Com- 
mons. His budget speeches were often made 
so unintelligible by defective manner and deliv- 
ery that they might almost as well have been 
spoken in a foreign language. Sir George Grey 
was a speaker of fearful fluency, and a respecta- 
ble administrator of the second or third class. 
He was as plodding in administration as he was 
precipitate of speech. 

The position of the Government of Lord John 
Russell was not one to be envied. The Irish 
famine occupied all attention, and soon seemed 
to be an evil too great for any Ministry to deal 
with. The failure of the potato was an over- 
whelming disaster for a people almost wholly 
agricultural and a peasantry long accustomed 
to live upon that root alone. Ireland contains 
very few large towns ; when the names of four 
or five are mentioned the list is done with, and 
we have to come to mere villages. The country 
has hardly any manufactures except that of linen 
in the northern province. In the south and west 
the people live by agriculture alone. The cot- 
tier system, which prevailed almost universally 
in three of the four provinces, was an arrange- 
ment by which a man obtained in return for his 
labor a right to cultivate a little patch of ground, 
just enough to supply him with food for the 
scanty maintenance of his family. The great 
landlords were for the most part absentees ; the 
smaller landlords were often deeply in debt, and 
were therefore compelled to screw every possible 
penny of rent out of their tenants-at-will. 

Underlying all the relations of landlord and 
tenant in Ireland were two great facts. The 
occupation of land was virtually a necessity of 
life to the Irish tenant. That is the first fact. 
The second is, that the land system under which 
Ireland was placed was one entirely foreign to 
the traditions, the ideas, one might say the very 
genius, of the Irish people. The Irish peasant 
regarded the right to have a bit of land, his 
share, exactly as other peoples regard the right 
to live. It was in his mind something element- 
ary and self-evident. He could not be loyal to, 
he could not even understand, any system which 
did not secure that to him. 

The Irish peasant with his wife and his family 
lived on the potato. Not a county in Ireland 
wholly escaped the potato disease, and many of 
the southern and western counties were soon in 
actual famine. A peculiar form of fever — famine- 
fever, it was called — began to show itself every- 
where. A terrible dysentery set in as well. In 
some districts the people died in hundreds daily 
from fever, dysentery, or sheer starvation. It 
would have been impossible that in such a coun- 
try as Ireland a famine of that gigantic kind 
should set in without bringing crimes of violence 
along with it. Unfortunately, the Government 
had to show an immense activity in the intro- 
duction of Coercion Bills and other repressive 
measures. 

Whatever might be said of the Government, no 
one could doubt the good-will of the English 
people. National Relief Associations were es- 
pecially formed in England. Relief, indeed, 
began to be poured in from all countries. The 
misery went on deepening and broadening. It 
was far too great to be effectually encountered by 



subscriptions, however generous ; and the Gov- 
ernment, meaning to do the best they could, 
were practically at their wits' end. The starv- 
ing peasants streamed into the nearest consider- 
able town, hoping for relief there, and found too 
often that there the very sources of charity were 
dried up. Many, very many, thus disappointed, 
merely laid down on the pavement and died there. 
Along the country roads one met everywhere 
groups of gaunt, dim-eyed wretches clad in mis- 
erable old sacking, and wandering aimlessly with 
some vague idea of finding food, as the boy in 
the fable hoped to find the gold where t lie rain- 
bow touched the earth. Many remained in their 
empty hovels and took Death there when he 
came. In some regions the country seemed 
unpeopled for miles. 

When the famine was over and its results 
came to be estimated, it was found that Ireland 
had lost about two millions of her population. 
She had come down from eight millions to six. 
This was the combined effect of starvation, of 
the various diseases that followed in its path 
gleaning where it had failed to gather, and of 
emigration. Long after all the direct effects 
of the failure of the potato had ceased the pop- 
ulation still continued steadily to decrease. The 
Irish peasant had in fact had his eyes turned, as 
Mr. Bright afterwards expressed it, towards the 
setting sun, and for long years the stream of 
emigration Westward never abated in its volume. 
A new Ireland began to grow up across the At- 
lantic. In every great city of the United States 
the Irish element began to form a considerable 
constituent of the population. 

The Government had hard work to do all this 
time. Lord George Bentinck was able to worry 
the Ministry somewhat effectively when they 
introduced a measure to reduce gradually the 
differential duties on sugar for a few years, and 
then replace these duties by a fixed and uniform 
rate. This was, in short, a proposal to apply the 
principle of Free-trade, instead of Protection, 
to sugar. Lord George Bentinck therefore pro- 
posed an amendment to the resolutions of the 
Government, declaring it unjust and impolitic to 
reduce the duty on foreign slave-grown sugar, 
as tending to check the advance of production 
by British free labor, and to give a great addi- 
tional stimulus to slave labor. Many sincere ■ 
and independent opponents of slavery, Lord 
Brougham in the House of Lords among them, 
were caught by this view of the question. Lord 
George and bis brilliant lieutenant at one time 
appeared as if they were likely to carry their 
point in the Commons. But it was announced 
that if the resolutions of the Government were 
defeated ministers would resign, and there was 
no one to take their place. Peel could not return 
to power ; and the time was far distant yet when 
Mr. Disraeli could form a Ministry. The oppo- 
sition crumbled away, therefore, and the Govern- 
ment measures were carried. 

There were troubles abroad as well as at home 
for the Government. Almost immediately on 
their coming into office the project of the Span- 
ish Marriages, concocted between King Louis 
Philippe and his minister, M. Guizot, disturbed 
for a time and very seriously the good under- 
standing between England and France. In an 
evil hour for themselves and their fame, Louis 
Philippe and his minister believed that they 
could obtain a virtual ownership of Spain by an 
ingenious marriage scheme. There was at one 
time a project talked of, rather than actually 
entertained, of marrying the young Queen of 
Spain and her sister to the Due d'Aumale and 
the Due de Montpensier, both sons of Louis 
Philippe. But this would have been too daring 
a venture on the part of the King of the French. 
Apart from any objections to be entertained by 
other States, it was certain that England could 
not "view with indifference," as the diplomatic 
phrase goes, the prospect of a son of the French 
King occupying the throne of Spain. 

Louis Philippe knew very well that he could not 
venture to marry one of his sons to the young Isa- 
bella. But he and his minister devised a scheme 
for securing to themselves and their policy the 
same effect in another way. They contrived that 
the Queen and her sister should be married at. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



21 



the same time— the Queen to her cousin, Don 
Francisco d'Assis, Duke of Cadiz; and her sis- 
ter to the Duke de Montpensier, Louis Philippe's 
ion. There was reason to expect that the 
Queen, if married to Don Francisco, would have 
no children, and that the wife of Louis Philippe's 
son, or some one of his children, would come to 
the throne of Spain. 

This scheme proved a failure, so far as the 
objects of Louis Philippe and his minister were 
concerned. Queen Isabella had children ; Mont- 
pensier's wife did not come to the throne; and 
the dynasty of Louis Philippe fell before long. 
But the friendship between England and France, 
from which so many happy results seemed likely 
to come to Europe, and the cause of free govern- 
ment, was necessarily interrupted for a time. 

The year 1848 was an era in the modern his- 
tory of Europe. It was the year of unfulfilled 
revolutions. The fall of the dynasty of Louis 
Philippe may be said to have set the revolution- 
»ry tide flowing. 

Louis Philippe fled to England, and his flight 
was the signal for long pent-up fires to break out 
all over Europe. Revolution soon was aflame 
in nearly all the capitals of the Continent. Rev- 
olution is like an epidemic : it finds out the 
weak places in systems. The two European 
countries which, being tried by it, stood it best 
were England and Belgium. In the latter coun- 
try the King made frank appeal to his people, 
and told them that if they wished to be rid of 
him he was quite willing to go. Language of 
this kind was new in the mouths of sovereigns ; 
and the Belgians were a people well able to 
appreciate it. They declared for their King, and 
the shock of the revolution passed harmlessly 
away. In England and Ireland the effect of 
the events in France was instantly made mani- 
fest. The Chartist agitation, which had been 
much encouraged by the triumphant return of 
Feargus O'Connor for Nottingham at the gener- 
al election of 1847, at once came to a head. 

It was determined to present a monster peti- 
tion to the House of Commons demanding the 
Charter, and in fact offering a last chance to 
Parliament to yield quietly to the demand. The 
petition was to be presented by a deputation, who 
were to be conducted by a vast procession up to 
the doors of the House. The procession was to 
be formed on Kennington Common, the space 
then unenclosed which is now Kennington Park, 
on the south side of London. There the Char- 
tists were to be addressed by their still trusted 
leader, Feargus O'Connor, and they were to 
march in military order to present their petition. 
The object undoubtedly was to make such a 
parade of physical force as should overawe the 
Legislature and the Government, and demon- 
strate the impossibility of refusing a demand 
backed by such a reserve of power. The pro- 
posed procession was declared illegal, and all 
peaceful and loyal subjects were warned not to 
take any part in it. But this was exactly what 
the more ardent among the Chartists expected 
and desired to see. 

At a meeting of the Chartist Convention held 
the night before the demonstration a considera- 
ble number were for going armed to Kenning- 
ton Common. Feargus O'Connor had, however, 
sense enough still left to throw the weight of his 
influence against such an insane proceeding, and 
to insist that the demonstration must show itself 
to be, as it was from the first proclaimed to be, a 
strictly pacific proceeding. The more ardent 
spirits at once withdrew from the organization. 
Those who might even at the very last have done 
mischief if they had remained part of the move- 
ment withdrew from it ; and Chartism was left to 
be represented by an open-air meeting and a peti- 
tion to Parliament, like all the other demonstra- 
tions that the metropolis had seen to pass, hardly 
heeded, across the field of politics. But the pub- 
lic at large was nut aware that the fangs of Char- 
tism had been drawn before it was let loose to 
play on Kennington Common that memorable 
10th of April. London awoke in great alarm 
that day. The wildest rumors were spread 
abroad in many parts of the metropolis. Long 
before the- Chartists had got together on Ken- 
nington Common at all, various remote quarters 



of London were filled with horrifying reports of 
encounters between the insurgents and the police 
or the military, in which the Chartists invariably 
had the better, and as a result of which they 
were marching in full force to the particular dis- 
trict where the momentary panic prevailed. Lon- 
don is worse off than most cities in such a time 
of alarm. It is too large for true accounts of 
things rapidly to diffuse themselves. In April, 
1848, the street telegraph was not in use for 
carrying news through cities, and the rapidly 
succeeding editions of the cheap papers were as 
yet unknown. In various quarters of London, 
therefore, the citizen was left through the greater 
part of the day to all the agonies of doubt and 
uncertainty. 

There was no lack, however, of public precau- 
tions against an outbreak of armed Chartism. 
The Duke of Wellington took charge of all the 
arrangements for guarding the public buildings 
and defending the metropolis generally. He 
acted with extreme caution, and told several in- 
fluential persons that troops were in readiness 
everywhere, but that they would not be seen un- 
less an occasion actually rose for calling on their 
services. The coolness and presence of mind of 
the stern old soldier are well illustrated in the 
fact that to several persons of influence and au- 
thority who came to him with suggestions for the 
defence of this place or that, his almost invaria- 
ble answer was, " Done already," or ' ' Done two 
hours ago," or something of the kind. A vast 
number of Londoners enrolled themselves as 
special constables for the maintenance of law and 
order. Nearly two hundred thousand persons, it 
is said, were sworn in for this purpose; and it 
will always be told, as an odd incident of that fa- 
mous scare, that the Prince Louis Napoleon, then 
living in London, was one of those who volun- 
teered to bear arms in the preservation of order. 
Not a long time was to pass away before the 
most lawless outrage on the order and life of a 
peaceful city was to be perpetrated by the special 
command of the man who was so ready to lend 
the saving aid of his constable's staff to protect 
English society against some poor hundreds or 
thousands of English working-men. 

The crisis, however, luckily proved not to 
stand in need of such saviors of society. The 
Chartist demonstration was a wretched failure. 
The meeting on Kennington Common, so far 
from being a gathering of half a million of men, 
was not a larger concourse than a temperance 
demonstration had often drawn together on the 
same spot. The procession was not formed, 
O'Connor himself strongly insisting on obedience 
to the orders of the authorities. The great 
Chartist petition itself, which was to have made 
so profound an impression on the House of Com- 
mons, proved as utter a failure as the demonstra- 
tion on Kennington Common. It was made cer- 
tain that the number of genuine signatures was 
ridiculously below the estimate formed by the 
Chartist leaders; and the agitation, after terri- 
fying respectability for a long time, suddenly 
showed itself a thing only to be laughed at. 

Here comes not inappropriately to an end the 
history of English Chartism. It died of public- 
ity ; of exposure to the air ; of the Anti-Corn 
Law League ; of the evident tendency of the 
time to settle all questions by reason, argument, 
and majorities ; of growing education ; of a 
strengthening sense of duty among all the more 
influential classes. All that was sound in its 
claims asserted itself and was in time conceded. 
But its active or aggressive influence ceased with 
1848. Not since that year has there been any 
serious talk or thought of any agitation asserting 
its claims by the use or even display of armed 
force in England. 

The spirit of the time had meanwhile made 
itself felt in a different way in Ireland. For 
some months before the beginning of tin; year 
the Young Ireland party had been established 
as a rival association to the Repealers, who still 
believed in the policy of O'Connell. The Nek 
lion newspaper was conducted and written for 
by some rising young men of high culture and 
remarkable talent. It was inspired in the be- 
ginning by at least one genuine poet, Mr. 
Thomas Davis, who, unfortunately, died in his 



youth. The Young Ireland party had received 
a new support by the adhesion of Mr. William 
Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien 
was a man of considerable influence in Ireland. 
He had a large property and high rank. He 
was connected with or related to many aristo- 
cratic families. His brother was Lord Inchi- 
quin ; the title of the Marquisate of Thomond 
was in the family. He was undoubtedly de- 
scended from the famous Irish hero and king, 
Brian Born, and was inordinately proud of his 
claims of long descent. He had the highest 
personal character and the finest sense of hon- 
or ; but his capacity for leadership of any move- 
ment was very slender. His adhesion to the 
cause of Young Ireland gave the movement a 
decided impulse. His rank, his legendary de- 
scent, his undoubted chivalry of character and 
purity of purpose, lent a romantic interest to his 
appearance as the recognized leader, or at least 
the figure-head, of the Young Irelanders. 

Smith O'Brien was a man of more mature 
years than most of his companions in the move- 
ment. He was some forty three or four years 
of age when he took the leadership of the move- 
ment. Thomas Francis Meagher, the most 
brilliant orator of the party, a man who under 
other conditions might have risen to great dis- 
tinction in public life, was then only about two 
or three and twenty. Mitehel and Duffy, who 
were regarded as elders among the Voting Ire- 
landers, were perhaps each some thirty years of 
age. 

Before the death of O'Connell the formal se- 
cession of the Young Ireland party from the 
regular Kepealers had taken place. The Con- 
tinental revolutions of the year 1848 suddenly 
converted the movement from a literary and 
poetical organization into a rebellious conspir- 
acy. The fever of that wild epoch spread itself 
at once over Ireland. In the mean time a fresh 
and a stronger influence than that of O'Brien 
or Meagher had arisen in Young Irelandism. 
Young Ireland itself now split into two sections, 
one for immediate action, the other for caution 
and delay. The party of action acknowledged 
the leadership of John Mitehel. The organ of 
this section was the newspaper started by Miteh- 
el in opposition to the Nation, which had grown 
too slow for him. The new journal was called 
the United Irishman, and in a short time com- 
pletely distanced the Nation in popularity and 
in circulation. The deliberate policy of the 
United Irishman was to force the hand first of 
the Government and then of the Irish people. 
Mitehel had made up his mind so to rouse the 
passion of the people as to compel the Govern- 
ment to take steps for the prevention of rebellion 
by the arrest of some of the leaders. Then 
Mitehel calculated upon the populace rising to 
defend or rescue their heroes — and then the 
game would be afoot ; Ireland would be entered 
in rebellion ; and the rest would be for fate to 
decide. 

The Government brought in a bill for the 
better security of the Crown and Government, 
making all written incitement to insurrection or 
resistance to the law felony, punishable with 
transportation. This measure was passed rap- 
idly through all its stages. It enabled the Gov- 
ernment to suppress newspapers like the United 
Irishman, and to keep in prison without bail, 
while awaiting trial, any one charged with an 
offence under the new Act. Mitehel soon gave 
the authorities an opportunity of testing the effi- 
cacy of the Act in his person. He repeated his 
incitements to insurrection, was arrested, and 
thrown into prison. The climax of the excite- 
ment in Ireland was reached when Mitchel's 
trial came on. There can be little doubt that 
he was rilled with a strong hope that his follow- 
ers would attempt to rescue him. Had there 
been another Mitehel out-of-doors, as fearless 
and reckless as the Mitehel in the prison, a san- 
guinary outbreak would probably have taken 
place. But the leaders of the movement outside 
were by no means clear in their own minds as 
to the course they ought to pursue. They dis- 
couraged any idea of an attempt to rescue 
Mitehel. His trial came on. He was found 
guilty. He made a short but powerful and im- 



22 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



passioned speech from the dock ; he was sen- 
tenced to fourteen years' transportation ; he was 
hurried under an escort of cavalry through the 
streets of Dublin, put on board a ship of war, 
and in a few hours was on his way to Bermuda. 
Dublin remained perfectly quiet ; the country 
outside hardly knew what was happening until 
Mitchel was well on his way, and far-seeing per- 
sons smiled to themselves and said the danger 
was over. 

So indeed it proved to be. The Government 
suspended the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, 
and issued warrants for the arrest of Smith 
O'Brien, Meagher, and other confederate leaders. 
Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others left 
Dublin and went down into the country. They 
held a series of gatherings which might be de- 
scribed as meetings of agitators or marshallings 
of rebels, according as one was pleased to inter- 
pret their purpose. But this sort of thing very 
soon drifted into rebellion. The principal body 
of the followers of Smith O'Brien came into col- 
lision with the police at a place called Ballingar- 
ry, in Tipperary. The police fired a few volleys. 
The rebels fired, with what wretched muskets 
and rifles they possessed, but without harming a 
single policeman. After a few of their number 
had been killed or wounded — it never was perfect- 
ly certain that any were actually killed — the rebel 
band dispersed, and the rebellion was all over. 

Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and some of their 
companions were arrested. The prisoners were 
brought for trial before a special commission held 
at Clonmel, in Tipperary, in the following Sep- 
tember. Smith O'Brien was the first put on 
trial, and was found guilty. He was sentenced 
to death after the old form in eases of high- 
treason — to be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. 
Meagher was afterwards found guilty, and sen- 
tenced to death with the same hideous formalities. 
No one, however, really believed for a moment 
that such a sentence was likely to be carried out 
in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of 
death was changed into one of transportation for 
life. The convicts were all sent to Australia, 
and a few years after Meagher contrived to make 
his escape. He was soon followed by Mitchel. 
Smith O'Brien himself afterwards received a par- 
don, on condition of his not returning to these 
islands; but this condition was withdrawn after 
a time, and he came back to Ireland. He died 
quietly in Wales in 1864. Mitchel settled for a 
while in Richmond, Virginia, and became an ar- 
dent advocate of slavery and an impassioned 
champion of the Southern rebellion. He re- 
turned to the North after the rebellion, and more 
lately came to Ireland, where, owing to some 
defect in the criminal law, he could not be ar- 
rested, his time of penal servitude having expired, 
although he had not served it. He was still a 
hero with many of the people ; he was put up as 
a candidate for an Irish county and elected. He 
was not allowed to enter the House of Commons, 
however ; the election was declared void, and a 
new writ was issued. He was elected again, 
and some turmoil was expected, when suddenly 
Mitchel, who had long been in sinking health, 
was withdrawn from the controversy by death. 
Meagher served in the army of the Federal States 
when the war broke out, and showed much of the 
soldier's spirit and capacity. His end was pre- 
mature and inglorious. He fell from the deck 
of a steamer one night; it was dark, and there 
was a strong current running ; help came too 
late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy 
waters of the Missouri closed the career that had 
opened with so much promise of brightness. 

Many of the conspicuous Young Irelanders rose 
to some distinction. Charles Gavan Duffy, the 
editor of the Nation, who was twice put on bis 
trial after the failure of the insurrection, but 
whom a jury would not on either occasion con- 
vict, became a member of the House of Com- 
mons, and afterwards emigrated to the colony of 
Victoria. He rose to be Prime-minister there, 
and received knighthood from the Crown and a 
pension from the Colonial Parliament. Thomas 
Darcy M'Gee, another prominent rebel, went to 
the United States, and tlience to Canada, where 
he rose to be a minister of the Crown. He was 
one of the most loyal supporters of the British 



connection. His untimely death by the hand of 
an assassin was lamented in England as well as 
in the colony he had served so well. 

CHAPTER IX. 

ATHENS, R03IE, AND LONDON. 

The name of Don Pacifico was familiar to 
the world some quarter of a century ago as that 
of the man whose quarrel had nearly brought 
on a European war, had caused a temporary 
disturbance of good relations between England 
and France, split up political parties in England 
in a manner hardly ever known before, and es- 
tablished the reputation of Lord Palmerston as 
one of the greatest Parliamentary debaters of his 
time. 

Don Pacifico was a Jew, a Portuguese by 
extraction, but a native of Gibraltar and a Brit- 
ish subject living in Athens. It had been cus- 
tomary in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by 
burning an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847 
the police of Athens were ordered to prevent 
this performance, and the mob, disappointed of 
their favorite amusement, ascribed the new or- 
ders to the influence of the Jews. Don Pa- 
cifico's house happened to stand near the spot 
where the Judas was annually burnt ; Don Pa- 
cifico was known to be a Jew, and the anger of 
the mob was wreaked upon him accordingly. 
Don Pacifico made a claim against the Greek 
Government for compensation for nearly thirty- 
two thousand pounds sterling. Another claim 
was made at the same time by another British 
subject, a man of a very different stamp from 
Don Pacifico. This was Mr. Finlay, the his- 
torian of Greece. Mr. Finlay had settled in 
Athens when the independence of Greece had 
been established. Some of his land had been 
taken for the purpose of rounding off the new 
palace gardens of King Otho ; and Mr. Finlay 
had declined to accept the terms offered by the 
Greek Government, to which other land-owners 
in the same position as himself had assented. 

None of these questions would seem at first 
sight to wear a very grave international charac- 
ter. Unluckily, Lord Palmerston became pos- 
sessed with the idea that the French minister in 
Greece was secretly setting the Greek Govern- 
ment on to resist our claims ; for the Foreign 
Office had made the claims ours, and insisted 
that Greece must pay up within a given time or 
take the consequences. Greece hesitated, and 
accordingly the British fleet was sent to the 
Piraeus, and seized all the Greek vessels belong- 
ing to the Government and to private merchants 
that were found within the waters. 

The Greek Government appealed to France 
and Russia, as powers joined with us in the 
treaty to protect the independence of Greece. 
France and Russia were both disposed to make 
bitter complaint of not having been consulted in 
the first instance by the British Government; 
nor was their feeling greatly softened by Lord 
Palmerston's peremptory reply that it was all 
a question between England and Greece, with 
which no other power had any business to inter- 
fere. At last something like a friendly arbitra- 
tion was accepted from France, and the French 
Government sent a special representative to Ath- 
ens to try to come to terms with our minister 
there. The difficulties appeared likely to be ad- 
justed. But some spirit of mischief seemed to 
have this unlucky affair in charge from the first, 
A new quarrel threatened at one time to break 
out between England and France. The French 
Government actually withdrew their ambassa- 
dor, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, from London, and 
there was for a short time a general alarm over 
Europe. But after a while our Government 
gave way, and agreed to an arrangement which 
was in the main all that France desired. When 
after a long lapse of time, the arbitrators came 
to settle the claims of Don Pacifico, it was 
found that he was entitled to about one-thirtieth 
of the sum he had originally demanded. Don 
Pacifico, it seems, charged in his bill one hun- 
dred and fifty pounds sterling for a bedstead, 
thirty pounds for the sheets of the bed, twenty- 
five pounds for two coverlets, and ten pound; 
for a pillow-case. The jewelry of Iris wife and 



daughters he estimated at two thousand pounds. 
It seems, too, that he had always lived in a 
humble sort of way, and was never supposed by 
his neighbors to possess such splendor of orna- 
ment and household goods. 

While the controversy between the English 
and French Governments was yet unfinished, 
Lord Stanley proposed in the House of Lords a 
resolution which was practically a vote of cen- 
sure on the Government. The resolution was 
carried, after a debate of great spirit and energy, 
by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord Palmerston 
was not dismayed. A Ministry is seldom great- 
ly troubled by an adverse vote in the House of 
Lords. Still, it was necessary that something 
should be done in the Commons to counterbal- 
ance the stroke of the Lords, and accordingly 
Mr. Roebuck, acting as an independent mem- 
ber, although on this occasion in harmony with 
the Government, brought forward on June 24, 
1850, a resolution which boldly affirmed that 
the principles on which the foreign policy of the 
Government had been regulated were "such as 
were calculated to maintain the honor and dig- 
nity of this country, and in times of unexam- 
pled difficulty to preserve peace between Eng- 
land and the various nations of the world." 

Among those who condemned the policy of 
Lord Palmerston were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cob- 
den, Sir Robert Peel, Sir William Molesworth, 
and Mr. Sidney Herbert, in the Commons. In 
the House of Lords, Lord Brougham, Lord Can- 
ning, and Lord Aberdeen had supported the res- 
olution of Lord Stanley. The principal interest 
of the debate now rests in the manner of Lord 
Palmerston's defence. That speech was indeed 
a masterpiece of Parliamentary argument and 
address. Lord Palmerston really made it ap- 
pear as if the question between him and his 
opponents was that of the protection of English- 
men abroad ; as if he were anxious to look after 
their lives and safety, while his opponents were 
urging the odious principle that when once an 
Englishman put his foot on a foreign shore his 
own Government renounced all intent to concern 
themselves with any fate that might befall him. 
In a peroration of thrilling power Lord Palmer- 
ston asked for the verdict of the House to decide 
"whether, as the Roman in days of old held 
himself free from indignity when he could say, 
'I am a Roman citizen,' so also a British sub- 
ject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel con- 
fident that the watchful eye and strong arm of 
England will protect him against injustice and 
wrong." When Lord Palmerston closed his 
speech the overwhelming plaudits of the House 
foretold the victory he had won. It was indeed 
a masterpiece of telling defence. The speech 
occupied some five hours in delivery. It was 
spoken, as Mr. Gladstone afterwards said, from 
the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next. 
It was spoken without the help of a single note. 

After a debate of four nights, a majority of 
forty-six was given for the resolution. The 
Ministry came out not only absolved but trium- 
phant. The odd thing about the whole proceed- 
ing is, that the ministers in general heartily dis- 
approved of the sort of policy which Palmerston 
defended so eloquently and put so energetically 
into action — at least, they disapproved, if not his 
principles, yet certainly his way of enforcing 
them. Of many fine speeches made during this 
brilliant debate we must notice one in particular. 
It was that of Mr. Cockburn, then member for 
Southampton. Never in our time has a reputa- 
tion been more suddenly, completely, and de- 
servedly made than Mr. Cockburn won by his 
brilliant display of ingenious argument and stir- 
ring words. The manner of the speaker lent 
additional effect to his clever and captivating 
eloquence. He had a clear, sweet, penetrating 
voice, a fluency that seemed so easy as to make 
listeners sometimes fancy that it ought to cost 
no effort, and a grace of gesture such as it must 
be owned the courts of law where he had had 
his training do not often teach. Mr. Cockburn 
defended the policy of Palmerston with an effect 
only inferior to that produced by Palmerston's 
own speech, and with a rhetorical grace and 
finish to which Palmerston made no pretension. 
Mr. Cockburn's career was safe from that hour. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



23 



It is needless to say that he well upheld in after 
years the reputation he won in a night. The 
brilliant and sudden success of the member for 
Southampton was but the fitting prelude to the 
abiding distinction won by the Lord Chief Jus- 
tice of England. 

One association of profound melancholy clings 
to that great debate. The speech delivered by 
Sir Robert Peel was the last that was destined 
to come from his lips. The debate closed on 
the morning of Saturday, June 29. It was 
nearly 4 o'clock when the division was taken, 
and Peel left the House as the sunlight was 
already beginning to stream into corridors and 
lobbies. He went home to rest; but his sleep 
could not be long. He had to attend a meeting 
of the Royal Commissioners of the Great Indus- 
trial Exhibition at twelve. He returned home 
for a short time after the meeting, and then set 
out for a ride in the Park. He called at Buck- 
ingham Palace and wrote his name in the 
Queen's visiting-book. Then, as he was riding 
up Constitution Hill, he stopped to talk to a 
young lady, a friend of his, who was also rid- 
ing. His horse suddenly shied and flung him 
off; and Peel clinging to the bridle, the animal 
fell with its knees on his shoulders. The inju- 
ries which he received proved beyond all skill 
of surgery. He lingered, now conscious, now de- 
lirious with pain, for two or three days; and he 
died about eleven o'clock on the night of July 
2. Most of the members of his family and some 
of his dearest old friends and companions in 
political arms were beside him when he died. 
The tears of the Duke of Wellington in one 
House of Parliament, and the eloquence of Mr. 
Gladstone in the other, were expressions as fit- 
ting and adequate as might be of the universal 
feeling of the nation. 

Peel seemed destined for great things yet 
■when he died. He was but in his sixty-third 
year ; he was some years younger than Lord 
Palmerston, who may be said without exagger- 
ation to have just achieved his first great suc- 
cess. Many circumstances were pointing to 
Peel as likely before long to be summoned again 
to the leadership in the government of the coun- 
try. It is superfluous to say that his faculties 
as Parliamentary orator or statesman were not 
showing any signs of decay. An English public 
man is not supposed to show signs of decaying 
faculties at sixty-two. The shying horse and 
perhaps the bad ridership settled the question 
of Peel's career between them. 

To the same year belongs the close of another 
remarkable career. On August 26, 18.10, Louis 
Philippe, lately King of the French, died at 
Claremont, the guest of England. Few men in 
history had gone through greater reverses. He 
had been soldier, exile, college teacher, wanderer 
among American-Indian tribes, resident of Phil- 
adelphia, and of Bloomingdale, in the New York 
suburbs, and King of the French. He died in 
exile among us, a clever, unwise, grand, mean 
old man. There was a great deal about him 
which made him respected in private life, and 
when he had nothing to do with state intrigues 
and the foreign policy of courts. He was much 
liked in England, where his sons lived for many 
years after. But there were Englishmen who 
did not like him and did not readily forgive him. 
One of these was Lord Palmerston. Louis 
Philippe always detested Lord Palmerston. Lord 
Palmerston wrote to his brother a few days after 
the death of Louis Philippe, expressing his sen- 
timents thereupon with the utmost directness. 
"The death of Louis Philippe," he said, "de- 
livers me from my most artful and inveterate 
enemy, whose position gave him in many ways 
the power to injure me." 

The autumn of 1S50 and the greater part of 
1851 were disturbed by a sharp and embittered 
struggle with the Papal court. The movement 
among some scholarly, mystical men in England 
towards the Roman Church had made a pro- 
found impression in Rome. To the eyes of 
Papal enthusiasm the whole English nation was 
only waiting for some word in season to return 
to the spiritual jurisdiction of Rome. A Papal 
bull, "given at St. Peter's, Rome, under the seal 
of the fisherman," directed the establishment in 



England "of a hierarchy of bishops deriving 
their titles from their own sees, which we con- 
stitute by the present letter in the various apos- 
tolic districts." There always were Catholic 
bishops in England. There were Catholic arch- 
bishops. They were free to go and come, to 
preach and teach as they liked ; to dress as they 
liked : fur all that nineteen out of every twenty 
Englishmen cared, they might have been also free 
to call themselves what they liked. The anger 
was not against the giving of the new titles, but 
against the assumption of a new right to give 
titles representing territorial distinctions in this 
country ; against the Pope's evident assumption 
that the change he was making was the natural 
result of an actual change in the national feeling 
of England. The Pope had divided England 
into various dioceses, which he placed under the 
control of an archbishop and twelve suffragans ; 
and the new archbishop was Cardinal Wiseman. 
Under the title of Archbishop of Westminster 
and Administrator Apostolic of the Diocese of 
Southwark, Cardinal Wiseman was now to reside 
in London. Cardinal Wiseman was already- 
well known in England. He was of English 
descent on his father's side and of Irish on his 
mother's ; he was a Spaniard by birth, and a 
Roman by education. His family on both sides 
was of good position ; his father came of a long 
line of Essex gentry. Wiseman had held the 
professorship of Oriental languages in the Eng- 
lish College at Rome, and afterwards became 
rector of the college. In 1840 he was appointed 
by the Pope one of the Vicars Apostolic in Eng- 
land, and held his position here as Bishop of 
Melipotamns in partilus infidelium. He was 
well known to be a fine scholar, an accomplished 
linguist, and a powerful preacher and contro- 
versialist. But he was believed also to be a 
man of great ecclesiastical ambition — ambition 
for his Church, that is to say — of singular bold- 
ness, and of much political ability. The Pope's 
action was set down as in great measure the 
work of Wiseman. The Cardinal himself was 
accepted in the minds of most Englishmen as a 
type of the regular Italian ecclesiastic — bold, 
clever, ambitious, and unscrupulous. The very 
fact of his English extraction only militated the 
more against him in the public feeling. He was 
regarded as in some sense one who had gone 
over to the enemy, and who was the more to be 
dreaded because of the knowledge he carried 
with him. The first step taken by Cardinal 
Wiseman did not tend to charm away this feel- 
ing. He issued a pastoral letter, addressed to 
England, on October 7, 1850, which was set 
forth as "given out of the Flaminian Gate of 
Rome." This description of the letter was after- 
wards stated to be in accordance with one of the 
necessary formularies of the Church of Rome; 
but it was then assumed in England to be an 
expression of insolence and audacity intended to 
remind the English people that from out of Rome 
itself came the assertion of supremacy over them. 
This letter was to be read publicly in all the 
Roman Catholic churches in London. It ad- 
dressed itself directly to the English people, and 
it announced that "your beloved country has 
received a place among the fair churches which 
normally constituted form the splendid aggregate 
of Catholic communion ; Catholic England has 
been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical 
firmament from which its light had long van- 
ished ; and begins now anew its course of regu- 
larly-adjusted action round the centre of unity, 
the source of jurisdiction, of light, and of vigor." 
The letter had hardly reached England when 
the country was aroused by another letter com- 
ing from a very different quarter, and intended 
as a counterblast to the Papal assumption of 
authority. This was Lord John Russell's fam- 
ous Durham letter. The letter was in reply to 
cue from the Bishop of Durham, and was dated 
"Downing Street. November 4." Lord John 
Russell condemned in the most unmeasured 
terms the assumption of the Pope as " a preten- 
sion of supremacy over the realm of England, 
and a claim to sole and undivided sway, which 
is inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with 
the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with 
the spiritual independence of the nation as as- 



serted even in the Roman Catholic times." But 
Lord John Russell went farther than all this. 
He declared that there was a danger that alarmed 
him mote than any aggresion from a foreign 
sovereign, and that was " the danger within the 
gates from the unworthy sons of the Church of 
England herself." The Catholics looked upon 
the letter as a declaration of war against Cathol- 
icism; the fanatical of the other side welcomed 
it as a trumpet -call to a new "No Popery" 
agitation. 

The very day after the letter appeared was 
the Guy Faux anniversary. All over the coun- 
try the effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wise- 
man took the place of the regulation "Guy," 
and were paraded and burnt amid tumultuous 
demonstrations. Mr. Disraeli endeavored at 
once to foment the prevailing heat of public 
temper and at the same time to direct its fervor 
against the Ministry themselves, by declaring in 
a published letter that, he could hardly blame the 
Pope for supposing himself at liberty to divide 
England into bishoprics, seeing the encourage- 
ment he had got from the ministers themselves 
by the recognition they had offered to the Ro- 
man Catholic hierarchy of Ireland. As a mat- 
ter of fact it was not the existing Government 
that had recognized the rank of the Irish Catho- 
lic prelates. The recognition had been formally 
arranged in January, 184."., by a royal warrant 
or commission for carrying out the Charitable 
Bequests Act, which gave the Irish Catholic pre- 
lates rank immediately after the prelates of the 
Established Church of the same degree. But 
the letter of Mr. Disraeli, like that of Lord John 
Russell, served to inflame passions on both sides, 
and to put the country in the worst possible 
mood for any manner of wholesome legisla- 
tion. Never during the same generation had 
there been such an outburst of anger on 
both sides of the religious controversy. It was 
a curious incident in political history that Lord 
John Russell, who had more than any English- 
man then living been identified with the princi- 
ples of religious liberty, who had sat at the feet 
of Fox, and had for his closest friend the Cath- 
olic poet, Thomas Moore, came to be regarded 
by Roman Catholics as the bitterest enemy of 
their creed and their rights of worship. 

The opening of Parliament came on February 
4, 1851. The Ministry had to do something. 
No Ministry that ever held power in England 
could have attempted to meet the House of Com- 
mons without some project of a measure to allay 
the intense excitement which prevailed through- 
out the country. Two or three days after the 
meeting of Parliament, Lord John Russell in- 
troduced his bill to prevent the assumption by 
Roman Catholics of titles taken from any terri- 
tory or place within the United Kingdom. The 
measure proposed to prohibit the use of all such 
titles under penalty, and to render void all acts 
done by or bequests made to persons under such 
titles. The Roman Catholic Relief Act imposed 
a penalty of one hundred pounds for every as- 
sumption of a title taken from an existing see. 
Lord John Russell proposed now to extend the 
penalty to the assumption of any title whatever 
from any place in the United Kingdom. The 
reception which was given to Lord John Russell's 
motion for leave to bring in this bill was not en- 
couraging. Usually leave to bring in a bill is 
granted as a matter of course. Some few gen- 
eral observations of extemporaneous and guarded 
criticism are often made, but the common prac- 
tice is to offer no opposition. On this occasion, 
however, the debate on the motion for leave to 
bring in the bill was renewed for night after 
night, and the fullest promise of an angry and 
prolonged resistance was given. The opponents 
of the measure had on their side not only all the 
prominent champions of religious liberty like Sir 
James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, 
and Mr. Bright; but also Protestant politicians 
of such devotion to the interests of the Church 
as Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Sel- 
borne, and Mr. Beresford Hope; and of course 
they had with them all t lie Irish Catholic mem- 
bers. Mr. Roebuck described the bill as "one 
of the meanest, pettiest, and most futile measures 
that ever disgraced even bigotry itself." Mr. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



Bright called it "little, paltry, and miserable — 
a mere sham to bolster up Church ascendency." 
Mr. Disraeli declared that he would not oppose 
the introduction of the bill ; but he spoke of it 
in language of as much contempt as Mr. Roebuck 
and Mr. Bright had used, calling it a mere piece 
of petty persecution. Sir Robert Inglis, on the 
part of the more extreme Protestants, objected to 
the bill on the ground that it did not go far enough. 
Yet so strong was the feeling in favor of some 
legislation, that when the division was taken 
three hundred and ninety-five votes were given 
for the motion, and only sixty-three against it. 

It was interrupted at one stage by events which 
had nothing to do witli its history. The Gov- 
ernment got into trouble of another kind. Mr. 
Locke King, member for East Surrey, asked for 
leave to bring in a bill to assimilate the county 
franchise to that existing in boroughs. Lord 
John Russell opposed the motion, and the Gov- 
ernment was defeated by 100 votes against 52. 
It was evident that this was only what is called 
a "snap" vote; that the House was taken by 
surprise, and that the result in no wise repre- 
sented the general feeling of Parliament. But 
still it was a vexatious occurrence for the Minis- 
try. Their budget had already been received 
with very general marks of dissatisfaction. The 
Chancellor of the Exchequer only proposed a 
partial and qualified repeal of the window tax, 
an impost which was justly detested, and he 
continued the income tax. Under these circum- 
stances Lord John Russell felt that he had no 
alternative but to tender his resignation to the 
Queen. Leaving his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill 
suspended in air, he announced that he could 
no longer think of carrying on the government 
of the country. 

The question was, who should succeed him. 
The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, afterwards 
Lord Derby. Lord Stanley offered to do his 
best to form a Government, but he tried without 
hope, and of course he was unsuccessful. The 
position of parties was very peculiar. It was 
impossible to form any combination which could 
really agree upon anything. There were three 
parties out of which a Ministry might be formed. 
These were the Whigs, the Conservatives, and 
the Peelites. The Peelites were a very rising 
and promising body of men. Among them 
were Sir James Graham, Lord Canning, Mr. 
Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mi-. Cardwell, 
and some others almost equally well known. 
Only these three groups were fairly in the com- 
petition for office ; for the idea of a Ministry of 
Radicals and Manchester men was not then like- 
ly to present itself to any official mind. But how 
could any one put together a Ministry formed 
from a combination of these three? The Peel- 
ites would not coalesce with the Tories be- 
cause of the Protection question, and because 
of Lord Stanley's own declaration that he still 
regarded the policy of Free-trade as only an 
experiment. The Peelites would not combine 
with the Whigs because of the Ecclesiastical 
Titles Bill. The Conservatives would not dis- 
avow protective ideas ; the Whigs would not 
give up the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. No states- 
man, therefore, could form a Government with- 
out having to count on two great parties being 
against him on one question or the other. 
There was nothing better to be done than to ask 
the ministers who had resigned to resume their 
places and muddle on as they best could. It is 
not enough to say that there was nothing better 
to be done: there was nothing else to be done. 
They were at all events still administering the 
affairs of the country, and no one would relieve 
them of the task. So the ministers returned to 
their places and resumed the Ecclesiastical Titles 
Bill. 

The Government at first, as we have seen, 
resolved to impose a penalty on the assumption 
of ecclesiastical titles by Roman Catholic prelates 
from places in the United Kingdom, and to 
make null and void all acts done or bequests 
made in virtue of such titles. But they found 
that it would be absolutely impossible to apply 
such legislation in Ireland. In that country a 
Catholic hierarchy had long been tolerated, and 
all the functions of a regular hierarchy had been 



in full and formal operation. To apply the new 
measure to Ireland would have been virtually to 
repeal the Roman Catholic Relief Act and re- 
store the penal laws. On the other hand, the 
ministers were not willing to make one law 
against titles for England and another for Ire- 
land. They were driven, therefore, to the course 
of withdrawing two of the stringent clauses of 
the bill, and leaving it little move than a mere 
declaration against the assumption of unlawful 
titles. But by doing this they furnished stronger 
reasons for opposition to both of the two very 
different parties who had hitherto denounced 
their way of dealing with the crisis. Those who 
thought the bill did not go far enough before 
were of course indignant at the proposal to shear 
it of whatever little force it had originally pos- 
sessed. They, on the other hand, who had op- 
posed it as a breach of the principle of religious 
liberty could now ridicule it with all the greater 
effect, on the ground that it violated a principle 
without even the pretext of doing any practical 
good as a compensation. 

The debates were long, fierce, and often pas- 
sionate. The bill was wrangled over until the 
end of June, and then a large number, some 
seventy, of the Irish Catholic members publicly 
seceded from the discussion and announced that 
they would take no farther part in the divisions. 
On this some of the strongest opponents of the 
Papal aggression, led by Sir Frederick Thesiger, 
afterwards Lord Chelmsford, brought in and 
carried a series of resolutions intended to make 
the bill more stringent than it had been even as 
originally introduced. The object of the resolu- 
tions was principally to give the power of prose- 
cuting and claiming a penalty to anybody, pro- 
vided he obtained the consent of the law officers 
of the Crown, and to make penal the introduc- 
tion of bulls. When the measure came on for 
a third reading Lord John Russell moved the 
omission of the added clauses, but he was de- 
feated by large majorities. The bill was done 
with so far as the House of Commons was con- 
cerned. After an eloquent and powerful protest 
from Mr. Gladstone against the measure, as one 
disparaging to the great principle of religious 
freedom, the bill was read a third time. It 
went up to the House of Lords, was passed 
there without alteration, although not without 
opposition, and soon after received the Royal 
assent. 

This was practically the last the world heard 
about it. In the Roman Church everything 
went on as before. The new Cardinal Arch- 
bishop still called himself Archbishop of West- 
minster ; some of the Irish prelates made a 
point of ostentatiously using their territorial 
titles in letters addressed to the ministers them- 
selves. The bitterness of feeling which the Pa- 
pal aggression and the legislation against it had 
called up did not, indeed, pass away very soon. 
It broke out again and again, sometimes in the 
form of very serious riot. But England was 
not restored to the communion of the Roman 
Catholic Church. On the other hand, the Ec- 
clesiastical Titles Act was never put in force. 
Nobody troubled about it. Many years after, 
in 1871, it was quietly repealed. It died in 
such obscurity that the outer public hardly knew 
whether it was above ground or below. 

The 1st of May, 1851, will always be memo- 
rable as the day on which the Great Exhibition 
was opened in Hyde Park. Golden indeed were 
the expectations with which hopeful people wel- 
comed that historic Exhibition. It was the first 
organized to gather all the representatives of 
the world's industry into one great fair; and 
there were those who seriously expected that 
men who had once been prevailed upon to meet 
together in friendly and peaceful rivalry would 
never again be persuaded to meet in rivalry of 
a fiercer kind. The Hyde Park Exhibition was 
often described as the festival to open the long 
reign of Peace. It might as a mere matter of 
chronology be called, without any impropriety, 
the festival to celebrate the close of the short 
reign of Peace. From that year, 1851, it may 
be said fairly enough that the world has hardly 
known a week of peace. The coup d'etat in 
France closed the year. The Crimean War be- 



gan almost immediately after, and was followed 
by the Indian Mutiny, and that by the war be- 
tween France and Austria, the long civil war 
in the United States, the Neapolitan enterprises 
of Garibaldi, and the Mexican intervention, un- 
til we come to the war between Austria, Prus- 
sia, and Denmark; the short, sharp struggle for 
German supremacy between Austria and Prus- 
sia, the war between France and Germany, the 
war between Russia and Turkey, and our own 
various Asiatic and African wars. Such were, 
in brief summary, the events that quickly fol- 
lowed the great inaugurating Festival of Peace 
in 1851. 

The first idea of the exhibition was conceived 
by Prince Albert ; and it was his energy and 
influence which succeeded in carrying the idea 
into practical execution. Prince Albert was 
President of the Society of Arts, and this po- 
sition secured him a platform for the effective 
promulgation of his ideas. On June 30, 1 849, 
he called a meeting of the Society of Arts at 
Buckingham Palace. He proposed that the 
Society should undertake the initiative in the 
promotion of an exhibition of the works of all 
nations. The idea was at once taken up by tho 
Society of Arts, and by their agency spread 
abroad. In the first few days of 1850 a formal 
Commission was appointed "for the promotion 
of the Exhibition of the Works of All Nations, 
to be holden in the year 1851." Prince Albert 
was appointed President of the Commission. 

On March 21 in the same year the Lord May- 
or of London gave a banquet at the Mansion- 
house to the chief magistrates of the cities, 
towns, and boroughs of the United Kingdom, 
for the purpose of inviting their co-operation in 
support of the undertaking. Prince Albert was 
present and spoke. He had cultivated the art 
of speaking with much success, and had almost 
entirely overcome whatever difficulty stood in 
his way from his foreign birth and education. 
He never quite lost his foreign accent; but his 
style of speaking was clear, thoughtful, stately, 
and sometimes even noble. It exactly suited its 
purpose. It was that of a man who did not set 
up for an orator ; and who,' when he spoke, 
wished that his ideas rather than his words 
should impress his hearers. At the dinner in 
the Mansion-house he spoke with great clear- 
ness and grace of the purposes of the Great Ex- 
hibition. It was, he said, to "give the world a 
true test, a living picture, of the point of indus- 
trial development at which the whole of mankind 
has arrived, and a new starting-point from which 
all nations will be able to direct their farther ex- 
ertions. " 

It must not be supposed, however, that the 
project of the Great Exhibition advanced wholly 
without opposition. Many persons were disposed 
to sneer at it altogether; many were sceptical 
about its doing any particular good ; not a few- 
still regarded Prince Albert as a foreigner and 
a pedant, and were exceedingly slow to believe 
that anything really practical was likely to be de- 
veloped under his impulse and protection. After 
some consideration the Royal Commissioners had 
fixed upon Hyde Park as the best site for the 
great building, and many energetic and some in- 
fluential voices were raised in fierce outcry against 
what was called the profanation of the park. It 
was argued that the public use of Hyde Park 
would be destroyed by the Exhibition ; that the 
park would be utterly spoiled ; that its beauty 
could never be restored. A petition was pre- 
sented by Lord Campbell to the House of Lords 
against the occupation of any part of Hyde Park 
with the Exhibition building. Lord Brougham 
supported the petition with his characteristic 
impetuosity and vehemence, and denounced the 
House of Lords for what he considered its servile 
deference to royalty in the matter of the Exhibi- 
tion and its site. It is probably true enough that 
only the influence of a prince could have carried 
the scheme to success against the storms of op- 
position that began to blow at various periods 
and from different points. Many times during 
its progress the Prince himself trembled for the 
success of his scheme. Many a time he must 
have felt inclined to renounce it, or at least to 
regret that he had ever taken it np. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



Absurd as the opposition to the scheme may 
■ow seem, it is certain that a great many sensi- 
ble persons thought the moment singularly inop- 
portune for the gathering of large crowds, and 
were satisfied that some inconvenient if not dan- 
gerous public demonstrations must be provoked. 
The smouldering embers of Chartism, they said, 
were everywhere under Society's feet. The 
crowds of foreigners would, some people said, 
naturally include large numbers of the "Reds" 
of all Continental nations, who would be only 
too glad to coalesce with Chartism and discon- 
tent of all kinds, for the purpose of disturbing the 
peace of London. The agitation caused by the 
Papal aggression was still in full force and flame. 
Most of the Continental sovereigns looked coldly 
on the undertaking. The King of Prussia took 
such alarm at the thought of the Red Republi- 
cans whom the Exhibition would draw together, 
that at first he positively prohibited his brother, 
then Prince of Prussia, now German Emperor, 
from attending the opening ceremonial; and 
though he afterwards withdrew the prohibition, 
he remained full of doubts and fears as to the per- 
sonal safety of any royal or princely personage 
found in Hyde Park on the opening day. The 
Duke of Cambridge being appealed to on the 
subject, acknowledged himself also full of appre- 
hensions. The objections to the site continued 
to grow up to a certain time, but public opinion 
gradually underwent a change, and the opposi- 
tion to the site was defeated in the House of 
Commons by a large majority. 

Even, however, when the question of the site 
had been disposed of, there remained immense 
difficulties in the way. The Press was not on 
the whole very favorable to the project. As the 
time for the opening drew near some of the for- 
eign diplomatists in London began to sulk at the 
whole project. There were small points of objec- 
tion made about the position and functions of 
foreign ambassadors at the opening ceremonial, 
and up to the last moment it was not quite cer- 
tain whether an absurd diplomatic quarrel might 
not have been part of the inaugural ceremonies 
of the opening day. 

The Prince did not despair, however, and the 
project went on. There was a great deal of 
difficulty in selecting a plan for the building. 
Huge structures of brickwork, looking like enor- 
mous railway sheds, costly and hideous at once, 
were proposed ; it seemed almost certain that 
some one of them must be chosen. Happily, a 
sudden inspiration struck Mr. (afterwards Sir 
Joseph) Paxton. Why not try glass and iron ? 
he asked himself. Why not build a palace of 
glass and iron large enough to cover all the in- 
tended contents of the Exhibition, and which 
should be at once light, beautiful, and cheap ? 
Mr. Paxton sketched out his plan hastily ; the 
idea was eagerly accepted by the Royal Commis- 
sioners, and the palace of glass and iron arose 
within the specified time on the green turf of 
Hyde Park. The idea so happily hit upon was 
serviceable in more ways than one to the success 
of the Exhibition. It made the building itself 
as much an object of curiosity and wonder as the 
collections under its crystal roof. Of the hun- 
dreds of thousands who came to the Exhibition 
a goodly proportion were drawn to Hyde Park 
rather by a wish to see Paxton's palace of glass 
than all the wonders of industrial and plastic art 
that it enclosed. 

The success of the opening day was indeed 
undoubted. There were nearly thirty thousand 
people gathered together within the building, 
and nearly three-quarters of a million of persons 
lined the way between the Exhibition and Buck- 
ingham Palace; and yet no accident whatever 
occurred, nor had the police any trouble im- 
posed on them by the conduct of anybody in the 
crowd. It is needless to say that there were no 
hostile demonstrations by Red Republicans or 
malignant Chartists or infuriated Irish Catho- 
lics. The one thing which especially struck 
foreign observers, and to which many eloquent 
pens and tongues bore witness, was the orderly 
conduct of the people. Nor did the subsequent 
history of the Exhibition in any way belie the 
promise of its opening day. It continued to at- 
tract delighted crowds to the last, and more 



than once held within its precincts at one mo- 
ment nearly a hundred thousand persons, a con- 
course large enough to have made the popula- 
tion of a respectable Continental capital. The 
Hyde Park enterprise bequeathed nothing very 
tangible or distinct to the world, except indeed 
the palace which, built out of its fabric, not its 
ruins, so gracefully ornaments one of the soft 
hills of Sydenham. But in a year made memor- 
able by many political events of the greatest im- 
portance, of disturbed and tempestuous politics, 
abroad and at home, of the deaths of many illus- 
trious men, and the failure of many splendid 
hopes, the Exhibition in Hyde Park still holds 
its place in memory — not for what it brought 
or accomplished, but simply for itself, its sur- 
roundings, and its house of glass. 

CHAPTER X. 

rALMEKSTON. 

The death of Sir Robert Peel had left Lord 
Palmerston the most prominent, if not actually 
the most influential, among the statesmen of Eng- 
land. Palmerston 's was a strenuous, self-assert- 
ing character. He had given himself up to the 
study of foreign affairs as no minister of his time 
had done. He had a peculiar capacity for un- 
derstanding foreign politics and people as well as 
foreign languages ; and he had come somewhat 
to pique himself upon his knowledge. His sym- 
pathies were markedly liberal. In all the popu- 
lar movements going on throughout the Conti- 
nent Palmerston's sympathies were generally 
with the peoples and against the Governments; 
while he had, on the other hand, a very strong 
contempt, which he took no pains to conceal, 
even for the very best class, of the Continental 
demagogue. Palmerston seized a conclusion at 
once, and hardly ever departed from it. He nev- 
er seemed to care who knew what he thought on 
any subject. He had a contempt for men of 
more deliberate temper, and often spoke and 
wrote as if he thought a man slow in forming an 
opinion must needs be a dull man, not to say a 
fool. All opinions not his own he held in good- 
humo'red scorn. In some of his letters we find 
him writing of men of the most undoubted gen- 
ius and wisdom, whose views have since stood all 
the test of time and trial, as if they were mere 
blockheads for whom no practical man could feel 
the slightest respect. It would be almost super- 
fluous to say, in describing a man of such a nat- 
ure, that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he 
saw great wisdom and force of character in men 
for whom neither then nor since did the world in 
general show much regard. As with a man, so 
with a cause, Lord Palmerston was to all appear- 
ance capricious in his sympathies. Calmer and 
more earnest minds were sometimes offended at 
what seemed a lack of deep-seated principle in 
his mind and his policy, even when it happened 
that he and they were in accord as to the course 
that ought to be pursued. His levity often 
shocked them ; his blunt, brusque ways of speak- 
ing and writing sometimes gave downright of- 
fence. 

Lord Palmerston was unsparing in his lectures 
to foreign states. He was always admonishing 
them that they ought to lose no time in at once 
adopting the principles of government which 
prevailed in England. While therefore he was 
a Conservative in home polities, and never even 
professed the slightest personal interest in any 
projects of political reform in England, he got 
the credit all over the Continent of being a sup- 
porter, promoter, and patron of all manner of 
revolutionary movements, and a disturber of the 
relations between subjects and their sovereigns. 
Palmerston, therefore, had many enemies among 
European statesmen. 

It is now certain that the Queen frequently 
winced under the expressions of ill-feeling which 
were brought to her ears as affecting England, 
and, as she supposed, herself, and which she 
believed to have been drawn on her by the in- 
considerate and impulsive conduct of Palmerston. 
The Prince Consort, on whose advice the Queen 
very naturally relied, was a man of singularly 
calm and earnest nature. He liked to form his 
opinions deliberately and slowly, and disliked 



expressing any opinion until his mind was well 
made up. Lord Palmerston, when Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs, was much in the habit of writ- 
ing and answering despatches on the spur of 
the moment, and without consulting either the 
Queen or his colleagues. Palmerston complained 
of the long delays which took place on several 
occasions when, in matters of urgent importance, 
he waited to submit despatches to the Queen 
before sending them off. He contended, too, 
that where the general policy of state was clearly 
marked out and well known, it would have been 
idle to insist that a Foreign Secretary capable 
of performing the duties of his office should wait 
to submit for the inspection and approval of the 
Sovereign and his colleagues every scrap of paper 
he wrote on before it was allowed to leave Eng- 
gland. But the Queen complained that on mat- 
ters concerning the actual policy of the State 
Palmerston was in the habit of acting on his own 
independent judgment and authority ; that she 
found herself more than once thus pledged to a 
course of policy which she had not had an oppor- 
tunity of considering, and would not have ap- 
proved if she had had such an opportunity; and 
that she hardly ever found any question abso- 
lutely intact and uncompromised when it was 
submitted to her judgment. 

The Queen and the Prince had long chafed 
under Lord Palmerston's cavalier way of doing 
business. So far back as 1849 her Majesty had 
felt obliged to draw the attention of the Foreign 
Secretary to the fact that his office was constitu- 
tionally under the control of the Prime-minister, 
and the despatches to be submitted for her ap- 
proval should, therefore, pass through the hands 
of Lord John Russell. Lord John Russell ap- 
proved of this arrangement, only suggesting— 
and the suggestion is of some moment in consid- 
ering Lord Palmerston's defence of his conduct 
afterwards — that every facility should be given 
for the transaction of business by the Queen's 
attending to the draft despatches as soon as pos- 
sible after their arrival. The Queen accepted 
the suggestion good-humoredly, only pleading 
that she should " not be pressed for an answer 
within a few minutes, as is done now sometimes." 
One can see a part of the difficulty at least even 
from these slight hints. Lord Palmerston was 
rapid in forming his judgments, as in all his 
proceedings, and when once he had made up his 
mind was impatient of any delay which seemed 
to him superfluous. Prince Albert was slow, de- 
liberate, reflective, and methodical. Lord Pal- 
merston was always sure he was right in every 
judgment he formed, even if it were adopted on 
the spur of the moment ; Prince Albert loved 
reconsideration and was open to new argument 
and late conviction. However, the difficulty 
was got over in 1849. Lord Palmerston agreed 
to every suggestion, and for the time all seemed 
likely to go smoothly. It was only for the time. 
The Queen soon believed she had reason to com- 
plain that the new arrangement was not carried 
out. Things were going on, she thought, in just 
the old way. Lord Palmerston dealt as before 
with foreign courts according to what seemed 
best to him at the moment ; and his Sovereign 
and his colleagues often only knew of some im- 
portant despatch or instruction when the thing 
was done and could not be conveniently or be- 
comingly undone. The Prince, at her Majesty's 
request, wrote to Lord John Russell, complain- 
ing strongly of the conduct of Lord Palmerston. 
An important memorandum was addressed by 
her Majesty to the Prime-minister, laying down 
in clear and severe language the exact rules by 
which the Foreign Secretary must be bound in 
his dealings with her. The memorandum was 
a severe and a galling rebuke for the Foreign 
Secretary. We can imagine with what emotions 
Lord Palmerston must have received it. He 
was a proud, self-confident man ; and it came 
on him just in the moment of his Pacilico tri- 
umph. But he kept down his feelings. It is 
impossible not to feel a high respect for the man- 
ner in which Lord Palmerston acted. He took 
his rebuke in the most perfect good temper. He 
wrote a friendly and good-humored letter to 
Lord John Russell, saying: "I have taken a 
copy of this memorandum of the Queen, and will 



26 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



not fail to attend to the directions which it con- 
tains." Lord Palmerston went a step farther 
in the way of conciliation. He asked for an 
interview with Prince Albert, and he explained 
to the Prince in the most emphatic and indig- 
nant terms that the accusation against him of 
being purposely wanting in respect to the Sover- 
eign was absolutely unfounded. But he does 
not seem in the course of the interview to have 
done much more than argue the point as to the 
propriety and convenience of the system he had 
lately been adopting in the business of the For- 
eign Office. So for the hour the matter dropped. 
But it was destined to come up again in more 
serious form than before. 

About this time the Hungarians had been mak- 
ing a desperate attempt to throw off the domina- 
tion of Austria and assert their independence. 
The struggle had begun over some questions of 
constitutional rights involved in the connection 
between Hungary and Austria, but it grew into a 
regular rebellion, having for its aim the complete 
freedom of Hungary. For a time it carried all 
before it, but it was finally crushed by the inter- 
vention of Russia. This intervention of Russia 
called up a wide and deep feeling of regret and 
indignation in this country. Louis Kossuth, who 
had been dictator of Hungary during the greater 
part of the insurrection, and who represented, in 
the English mind at least, the cause of Hungary 
and her national independence, came to England, 
and the English public welcomed him with espe- 
cial cordiality. There was much in Kossuth him- 
self as well as in his cause to attract the enthusi- 
asm of popular assemblages. He had a striking- 
ly handsome face and a stately presence. He 
was picturesque and perhaps even theatric in his 
dress and his bearing. He looked like a picture ; 
all his attitudes and gestures seemed as if they 
were meant to be reproduced by a painter. He 
was undoubtedly one of the most eloquent men 
who ever addressed an English popular audience. 
In one of his imprisonments Kossuth had studied 
the English language, chiefly from the pages of 
Shakspeare. The English he spoke was the no- 
blest in its style from which a student could sup- 
ply his eloquence : Kossuth spoke the English of 
Shakspeare. Through all his speeches there ran 
the thread of one distinct principle of internation- 
al policy to which Kossuth endeavored to obtain 
the assent of the English people. This was the 
principle that if one State intervenes in the do- 
mestic affairs of another for the purpose of put- 
ting down revolution, it then becomes the right, 
and may even be the duty, of any third State to 
throw in the weight of her sword against the un- 
justifiable intervention. As a principle this is 
nothing more than some of the ablest and most 
thoughtful Englishmen had advocated before and 
have advocated since. But in Kossuth's mind, 
and in the understanding of those who heard him, 
it meant that England ought to declare war 
against Russia or Austria, or both ; the former 
for having intervened between the Emperor of 
Austria and the Hungarians, and the latter for 
having invited and profited by the intervention. 

The presence of Kossuth and the reception he 
got excited a wild anger and alarm among Aus- 
trian statesmen. The Austrian ambassador in 
England was all sensitiveness and remonstrance. 
The relations between this country and Austria 
seemed to become every day more and more 
strained. Lord Palmerston regarded the anger 
and the fears of Austria with a contempt which 
he took no pains to conceal. Lord Palmerston 
knew that the English public never had any seri- 
ous notion of going to war with Austria in obe- 
dience to Kossuth's appeal. There came a time 
when Kossuth lived in England forgotten and 
unnoticed ; when his passing away from England 
■was unobserved, as his presence there had long 
been. The English crowds who applauded Kos- 
suth at first meant nothing more than general 
sympathy with any hero of Continental revolu- 
tion, and personal admiration for the eloquence 
of the man who addressed them. But Kossuth 
did not thus accept the homage paid to him. 
No foreigner could have understood it in his place. 
Lord Palmerston understood it thoroughly, and 
knew what it meant, and how long it would last. 

Some of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, how- 



ever, became greatly alarmed when it was report- 
ed that the Foreign Minister was about to receive 
a visit from Kossuth in person to thank him for 
the sympathy and protection which England had 
accorded to the Hungarian refugees while they 
were still in Turkey, and without which it is only 
too likely that they would have been handed over 
to Austria or Russia. If Kossuth were received 
by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian ambassador, 
it was confidently reported, would leave England. 
Lord John Russell took alarm, and called a meet- 
ing of the Cabinet to consider the momentous 
question. Lord Palmerston reluctantly consent- 
ed to appease the alarms of his colleagues by 
promising to avoid an interview with Kossuth. 
The hoped-for result, that of sparing the sensi- 
bilities of the Austrian Government, was not at- 
tained. In fact, things turned out a great deal 
worse than they might have done if the interview 
between Lord Palmerston and Kossuth had been 
quietly allowed to come off. Meetings were held 
to express sympathy with Kossuth, and addresses 
were voted to Lord Palmerston thanking him 
for the influence he had exerted in preventing 
the surrender of Kossuth to Austria. Lord Pal- 
merston consented to receive these addresses from 
the hands of deputations at the Foreign Office. 
The whole proceeding considerably alarmed some 
of Lord Palmerston's colleagues, and was regard- 
ed with distinct displeasure by the Queen and 
Prince Albert. But the possible indiscretion of 
Lord Palmerston's dealings with a deputation or 
two from Finsbury and Islington became a matter 
of little interest when the country was called 
upon to consider the propriety of the Foreign Sec- 
retary's dealings with the new ruler of a new 
state system, with the author of the coup d'etat. 

Things had been going rather strangely in 
France. After the fall of Louis Philippe a re- 
public had been set up, and it had received the 
support of a young man whom we last saw play- 
ing the part of special constable against the 
Chartists, the Prince Louis Napoleon. Louis 
Napoleon was a nephew of the great Emperor. 
He had made attempts to get on the throne of 
France before, and been imprisoned and escaped, 
and taken refuge in England. Louis Napoleon 
had lived many years in England. He was as 
well known there as any prominent member of 
the English aristocracy. He weDt a good deal 
into very various society, literary, artistic, mere- 
ly fashionable, purely rowdy, as well as into that 
political society which might have seemed nat- 
ural to him. In all circles the same opinion ap- 
pears to have been formed of him. From the 
astute Lord Palmerston to the most ignorant of 
the horse-jockeys with whom he occasionally con- 
sorted, all who met him seemed to think of the 
Prince in much the same way. It was agreed 
on all hands that he was a fatuous, dreamy, 
moony, impracticable, stupid young man. A 
sort of stolid amiability, not enlightened enough 
to keep him out of low company and questiona- 
ble conduct, appeared to be his principal char- 
acteristic. He constantly talked of his expected 
accession somehow and some time to the throne 
of France, and people only smiled pityingly at 
him. When the republic was fairly established 
he went over to France, gave it his support, and 
succeeded in being elected its President. Then 
he plotted to overthrow it. He won the arm)' 
to his side. On the 2d of December, 1851, he 
seized and imprisoned all his political oppo- 
nents; the next day he bore down with the 
most savage violence all possible opposition. 
Paris was in the hands of his soldiers ; hundreds 
of helpless people were slaughtered, the streets 
of Paris ran with blood ; Louis Napoleon pro- 
claimed himself Prince President. This was 
the coup d'etat. 

The news of the coup d'etat took England by 
surprise. A shock went through the whole 
country. The almost universal voice of popu- 
lar opinion condemned it as strongly as nearly all 
men of genuine enlightenment and feeling con- 
demned it then and since. The Queen was par- 
ticularly anxious that nothing should be said by 
the British ambassador to commit us to any ap- 
proval of what had been done. On December 
4 the Queen wrote to Lord John Russell from 
Osborne, expressing her desire that Lord Nor- 



manby, our ambassador at Paris, should be in- 
structed to remain entirely passive, and say no 
word that might be misconstrued into approval 
of the action of the Prince President. Lord 
Normanby's reply to this despatch created a 
startling sensation. Our ambassador wrote to 
say that when he called on the French Minister 
for Foreign Affairs to inform him that he bad 
been instructed by her Majesty's Government 
not to make any change in bis relations with 
the French Government, the Minister, M. Turgot, 
told him that he had heard two days before from 
Count Walewski, the French ambassador in 
London, that Lord Palmerston had expressed to 
him his entire approval of what Louis Napoleon 
had done, and his conviction that the Prince 
President could 7iot have acted otherwise. It 
would not be easy to exaggerate the sensa- 
tion produced among Lord Palmerston's col- 
leagues by this astounding piece of news. The 
Queen wrote at once to Lord John Russell, ask- 
ing him if he knew anything about the approval 
which " the French Government pretend to 
have received;" declaring that she could not 
" believe in the truth of the assertion, as such an 
approval given by Lord Palmerston would have 
been in complete contradiction to the line of 
strict neutrality and passiveness which the Queen 
had expressed her desire to see followed with re- 
gard to the late convulsions at Paris." Lord 
John Russell replied that he had written to Lord 
Palmerston, " saying that he presumed there was 
no truth in the report." The reply of Lord Pal- 
merston left no doubt that Lord Palmerston had 
expressed to Count Walewski his approval of 
the coup d'etat. 

Lord Palmerston endeavored to draw a dis- 
tinction between the expressions of a Foreign 
Secretary in conversation with an ambassador 
and a formal declaration of opinion. But it is 
clear that the French ambassador did not un- 
derstand Lord Palmerston to be merely indulg- 
ing in the irresponsible gossip of private life, 
and that Lord Palmerston never said a word 
to impress him with the belief that their con- 
versation had that colorless and unmeaning 
character. In any case it was surely a piece 
of singular indiscretion on the part of a Foreign 
Minister to give the French ambassador, even in 
private conversation, an unqualified opinion in 
favor of a stroke of policy of which the British 
Government as a whole, and indeed, with the 
one exception of Lord Palmerston, entirely disap- 
proved. Lord John Russell made up his mind. 
He came to the conclusion that he could no longer 
go on with Lord Palmerston as a colleague in the 
Foreign Office. The quarrel was complete ; Lord 
Palmerston ceased from that time to be Foreign 
Secretary, and his place was taken by Lord Gran- 
ville. Seldom has a greater sensation been pro- 
duced by the removal of a minister. The effect 
which was created all over Europe was probably 
just what Lord Palmerston would have desired: 
the belief prevailed everywhere that he had been 
sacrificed to the monarchical and reactionary in- 
fluences all over the Continent. The statesmen 
of Europe were nnder the impression that Lord 
Palmerston was put out of office as an evidence 
that England was about to withdraw from her 
former attitude of sympathy with the popular 
movements of the Continent. 

The meeting of Parliament took place on Feb- 
ruary 3 following, 1852. It would be superflu- 
ous to say the keenest anxiety was felt to know 
the full reason of the sudden dismissal. The 
House of Commons was not long left to wait for 
an explanation. Lord John Russell made a long 
speech, in which he went into the whole history 
of the differences between Lord Palmerston and 
his colleagues; and, what was more surprising 
to the House, into a history of the late Foreign 
Secretary's differences with his Sovereign, and 
the threat of dismissal which had so long been 
hanging over his head. The Prime -minister 
read to the House the Queen's memorandum. 
Lord John Russell's speech was a great success. 
Lord Palmerston's was, even in the estimation 
of his closest friends, a failure. Palmerston 
seemed to have practically no defence. He 
only went over again the points put by him in 
the correspondence already noticed ; contended 



A SHOUT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



27 



that on the whole ne had judged rightly of the 
French crisis, and that he couliJ not help form- 
ing an opinion on it, and so forth. Of the Queen's 
memorandum he said nothing. He made up 
his mind that a dispute between a sovereign and 
a subject would be unbecoming of both ; and he 
passed over the memorandum in deliberate si- 
lence. The almost universal opinion of the 
House of Commons and of the clubs was that 
Lord Palmerston's career was closed. " Palmer- 
ston is smashed !" was the common saving of 
the clubs. A night or two after the debate Lord 
Dulling met Mr. Disraeli on the staircase of the 
Russian Embassy, and Disraeli remarked to him 
that " there was a Palmerston." Lord Palmer- 
ston evidently did not think so. The letters he 
wrote to friends immediately after his fall show 
him as jaunty and full of confidence as ever. He 
was quite satisfied with the way things had gone. 
He waited calmly for what he called, a few days 
afterwards, "My tit-for-tat with John Russell," 
which came about, indeed, sooner than even he 
himself could well have expected. 

All through the year 1852 the national mind 
of England was disturbed. The country was 
stirring itself in quite an unusual manner, in 
order that it might be ready for a possible and 
even an anticipated invasion from France. The 
Volunteer movement sprang into sudden exist- 
ence. All over the country corps of young 
volunteers were being formed. An immense 
amount of national enthusiasm accompanied 
and acclaimed the formation of the volunteer 
army, which received the sanction of the Crown 
early in the year, and thus became a national 
institution. The meaning of all this movement 
was explained by the steady progress of the Prince 
President of France to an imperial throne. The 
previous year had closed upon his coup d'etat. 
He had arrested, imprisoned, banished, or shot 
his principal enemies, and had demanded from 
the French people a Presidency for ten years, a 
Ministry responsible to the executive power — 
himself alone — and two political Chambers to be 
elected by universal suffrage. Nearly five hun- 
dred prisoners, untried before any tribunal, even 
that of a drum -head, had been shipped off to 
Cayenne. The streets of Paris had been soaked 
in blood. The President instituted a plebiscite, 
or vote of the whole people, and of course he got 
all he asked for. There was no arguing with 
the commander of twenty legions, and of such 
legions as those that had operated with terrible 
efficiency on the Boulevards. The Bonapartist 
Empire was restored. The President became 
Emperor, and Prince Louis Napoleon was Napo- 
leon the Third. 

It would have been impossible that the Eng- 
glish people could view all this without emotion 
and alarm. They could not see with indifference 
the rise of a new Napoleon to power. The one 
special characteristic of the Napoleonic princi- 
ple was its hostility to England. The life of the 
great Napoleon in its greatest days had been de- 
voted to the one purpose of humiliating Eng- 
land. His plans had been foiled by England. 
He owed his fall principally to England. He 
died a prisoner of England, and with his hatred 
of her embittered rather than appeased. It did 
not seem possible that a new Emperor Napoleon 
could arise without bringing a restoration of that 
hatred along with him. An invasion of Eng- 
land was not a likely event. But it was not by 
any means an impossible event. The more com- 
posedly one looks back to it now, the more he 
will be compelled to admit that it was at least 
on the cards. The feeling of national uneasi- 
ness and alarm was not a mere panic. There 
were five projects with which public opinion all 
over Europe specially credited Louis Napoleon 
when he began bis imperial reign. One was a 
war with Russia. Another was a war with 
Austria. A third was a war with Prussia. A 
fourth was the annexation of Belgium. The 
fifth was the invasion of England. Three of 
these projects were carried out. The fourth we 
know was in contemplation. Our combination 
with France in the first project probably put all 
serious thought of the fifth out of the head of the 
French Emperor. He got far more prestige out 
of an alliance with us than he could ever have 



got out of any quarrel with us ; and he had lit- 
tle or no risk. But we need not look upon the 
mood of England in 1852 as one of idle and 
baseless panic. The same feeling broke into 
life again in 1859, when the Emperor of the 
French suddenly announced his determination 
to go to war with Austria. It was in this latter 
period, indeed, that the Volunteer movement 
became a great national organization. But in 
1852 the beginning of an army of volunteers was 
made; and, what is of more importance to the 
immediate business of our history, the Govern- 
ment determined to bring in a bill for the reor- 
ganization of the national militia. 

Our militia was not in any case a body to be 
particularly proud of at that time. It had fallen 
into decay, and almost into disorganization. 
Nothing could have been a more proper work for 
any Government than its restoration to efficiency 
and respectability. We had on our hands at 
the time one of our little wars— a Caffre war — 
which was protracted to a vexatious length, and 
which was not without serious military difficul- 
ty. It began in the December of 1850, and was 
not completely disposed of before the early part 
of 1853. We could not afford to have our de- 
fences in any defective condition. But it was an 
unfortunate characteristic of Lord John Russell's 
Government that it attempted so much legisla- 
tion, not because some particular scheme com- 
mended itself to the mature wisdom of the Min- 
istry, but because something had to be done in a 
hurry to satisfy public opinion ; and the Govern- 
ment could not think of anything better at the 
moment than the first scheme that came to hand. 
Lord John Russell accordingly introduced a 
Militia Bill, which was in the highest degree in- 
adequate and unsatisfactory. The principal pe- 
culiarity of it was, that it proposed to substitute 
a local militia for the regular force that had 
been in existence. Lord Palmerston saw great 
objections to this alteration, and urged them 
with much briskness and skill on the night when 
Lord John Russell explained his measure. 
When Palmerston began his speech he probably 
intended to be merely critical as regarded points 
in the measure which were susceptible of amend- 
ment ; but as he went on he found more and 
more that he had the House with him. Every 
objection he made, every criticism he urged, 
almost every sentence he spoke, drew down in- 
creasing cheers. Lord Palmerston saw that the 
House was not only thoroughly with him on this 
ground, but thoroughly against the Government 
on various grounds. A few nights after he fol- 
lowed up his first success by proposing a resolu- 
tion to substitute the word "regular "for the 
word " local " in the bill ; thus, in fact, to recon- 
struct the bill on an entirely different principle 
from that adopted by its framer. The effort 
was successful. The Peelites went with Palmer- 
ston ; the Protectionists followed him as well ; 
and the result was that 136 votes were given for 
the amendment, and only 125 against it. The 
Government were defeated by a majority of 
eleven. Lord John Russell instantly announced 
that he could no longer continue in office, as he 
did not possess the confidence of the country. 
The announcement took the House by surprise. 
Palmerston did not expect any such result, he 
declared ; but the revenge was doubtless sweet 
for all that. This was in February, 1852; and 
it was only in the December of the previous year 
that Lord Palmerston was compelled to leave 
the Foreign Office by Lord John Russell. 

The Russell Ministry had done little and ini- 
tiated less. It had carried on Peel's system by 
throwing open the markets to foreign as well as 
colonial sugar, and by the repeal of the Naviga- 
tion Laws enabled merchants to employ foreign 
ships and seamen in the conveyance of their 
goods. It had made a mild and ineffectual 
effort at a Reform Bill, and had feebly favor- 
ed attempts to admit Jews to Parliament. It 
sank from power with an unexpected collapse 
in which the nation felt small concern. Lord 
Palmerston did not come to power again at that 
moment. He might have gone in with Lord 
Derby, if he had been so inclined. But Lord 
Derby — who, it may be said, had succeeded to 
that title on the death of his father in the pre- 



ceding year — still talked of testing the policy of 
Free-trade at a general election, and of course 
Palmerston was not disposed to have anything 
to do with such a proposition. Lord Derby 
tried various combinations in vain, and at last 
had to experiment with a Cabinet of undiluted 
Protectionists. He had to take office, not be- 
cause be wanted it, or because any one in partic- 
ular wanted him, but simply and solely because 
there was no one else who could undertake the 
task. The Ministry which Lord Derby was 
able to form was not a strong one. Lord Pal- 
merston described it as containing two men of 
mark, Derby and Disraeli, and a number of 
ciphers. It had not, except for these two, a 
single man of any political ability, and had 
hardly one of any political experience. It had 
an able lawyer for Lord Chancellor, Lord St. 
Leonards, but he was nothing of a politician. 
The rest of the members of the Government 
were respectable country gentlemen. The head 
of the Government was remarkable for his dash- 
ing blunders as a politician quite as much as for 
his dashing eloquence. 

Concerning Mr. Disraeli himself it is not too 
much to say that many of his own party were 
rather more afraid of his genius than of the dul- 
ness of any of his colleagues. It is not a pleas- 
ant task in the best of circumstances to be at 
the head of a tolerated Ministry in the House 
of Commons: a Ministry which is in a minor- 
ity, and only holds its place because there is no 
one ready to relieve it of the responsibility of 
office. Rarely, indeed, is the leadership of the 
House of Commons undertaken by any one who 
has not previously held office ; and Mr. Disraeli 
entered upon leadership and office at the same 
moment for the first time. He become Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House 
of Commons. Among the many gifts with 
which he was accredited by fame, not a single 
admirer had hitherto dreamed of including a 
capacity for the mastery of figures. In addi- 
tion to all the ordinary difficulties of the Min- 
istry of a minority there was, in this instance, 
the difficulty arising from the obscurity and 
inexperience of nearly all its members. Face- 
tious persons dubbed the new Administration 
the " Who? Who? Ministry." The explanation 
of this odd nickname was found in a story then 
in circulation about the Duke of Wellington. 
The Duke, it was said, was anxious to hear 
from Lord Derby at the earliest moment all 
about the composition of his Cabinet. He was 
overheard asking the new Prime-minister in the 
House of Lords the names of his intended col- 
leagues. The Duke was rather deaf, and, like 
most deaf persons, spoke in very loud tones, and 
of course had to be answered in tones also 
rather elevated. That which was meant for a 
whispered conversation became audible to the 
whole House. As Lord Derby mentioned each 
name the Duke asked, in wonder and eager- 
ness," Who?" "Who?" After each new name 
came the same inquiry. The Duke of Welling- 
ton had clearly never heard of most of the new 
ministers before. The story went about ; and 
Lord Derby's Government was familiarly known 
as the "Who? Who? Ministry." 

Lord Derby entered office with the avowed 
intention of testing the Protection question all 
over again. But he was no sooner in office 
than he found that the bare suggestion had im- 
mensely increased his difficulties. The Free- 
traders began to stand together again the mo- 
ment Lord Derby gave his unlucky hint. Every 
week that passed over his head did something 
to show him the mistake he had made when he 
hampered himself with any such undertaking 
as the revival of the Protection question. Any 
chance the Government might otherwise have 
had of making effective head against their very 
trying difficulties was completely cut away from 
them. The Free-trade League was reorganized. 
A conference of Liberal members of the House 
of Commons was held at the residence of Lord 
John Russell in Chesham Place, at which it was 
resolved to extract or extort from the Govern- 
ment a full avowal of their policy with regard 
to Protection and Free-trade. The feat would 
have been rather difficult of accomplishment, 



28 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



geeing that the Government had absolutely no 
policy to offer on the subject, and were only 
hoping to be able to consult the country, as one 
might consult an oracle. The Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, when he made his financial state- 
ment, accepted the increased prosperity of the 
few years preceding with an unction which show- 
ed that he at least had no particular notion of 
attempting to reverse the policy which had so 
greatly contributed to its progress. Mr. Dis- 
raeli pleased the Peelites and the Liberals much 
more by his statement than he pleased his chief 
or many of his followers. His speech, indeed, 
was very skilful. People were glad that one 
who had proved himself so clever with many 
things should have shown himself equal to the 
uncongenial and unwonted task of dealing with 
dry facts and figures. 

Mr. Disraeli merely proposed in his financial 
statement to leave things as he found them ; to 
continue the income tax for another year, as a 
provisional arrangement, pending that complete 
re-examination of the financial affairs of the coun- 
try to which he intimated that he found himself 
quite equal at the proper time. No one could 
suggest any better course, and the new Chancel- 
lor came off on the whole with flying colors. The 
Government on the whole did not do badly dur- 
ing this period of their probation. They intro- 
duced and carried a Militia Bill, for which they 
obtained the cordial support of Lord Palmerston; 
and they gave a constitution to New Zealand ; 
and then, in the beginning of July, the Parlia- 
megt was prorogued and the dissolution took 
place. The elections were signalized by very se- 
rious riots in many parts of the country. In Ire- 
land particularly party passions ran high. The 
landlords and the police were on one side ; the 
priests and the popular party on the other ; and 
in several places there was some bloodshed. It 
was not in Ireland, however, a question about 
Free-trade or Protection. The question which 
agitated the Irish constituencies was that of 
Tenant Right, in the first instance; and there 
was also much bitterness of feeling remaining 
from the discussions on the Ecclesiastical Titles 
Bill. 

From the time of the elections nothing more 
was heard about Protection or about the possibil- 
ity of getting a new trial for its principles. Mr. 
Disraeli not only threw Protection overboard, 
but boldly declared that no one could have sup- 
posed the Ministry had the slightest intention of 
proposing to bring back the laws that were re- 
pealed in 1846. In fact, the time, he declared, 
had gone by when such exploded politics could 
even interest the people of this country. The 
elections did little or nothing for the Govern- 
ment. They gained a little, but they were still 
to be the Ministry of a minority — a Ministry on 
sufferance. It was plain to every one that their 
existence as a Ministry was only a question of 
days. Speculation was already busy as to their 
successors ; and it was evident that a new Gov- 
ernment could only be formed by some sort of 
coalition between the Whigs and the Peelites. 

Among the noteworthy events of the general 
election was the return of Macaulay to the House 
of Commons. Edinburgh elected him in a man- 
ner particularly complimentary to him and honor- 
able to herself. He had for some years been ab- 
sent from Parliament. Differences had arisen be- 
tween him and his constituents, and the result 
of it was, that at the general election of 1847 
Macaulay was left third on the poll at Edinburgh. 
He felt this deeply. He might have easily found 
some other constituency ; but his wounded pride 
hastened a resolution he had for some time been 
forming to retire to a life of private literary la- 
bor. He therefore remained out of Parliament. 
In 1852 the movement of Edinburgh towards him 
was entirely spontaneous. Edinburgh was anx- 
ious to atone for the error of which she had 
been guilty. Macaulay would go no farther than 
to say that if Edinburgh spontaneously elected 
him he should deem it a very high honor, but he 
would not do anything whatever to court favor. 
He did not want to be elected to Parliament, he 
said ; he was very happy in his retirement. Ed- 
inburgh elected him on those terms. He was 
not long allowed by his health to serve her, but 



so long as he remained in the Honse of Commons 
it was as member for Edinburgh. 

On September 14, 1852, the Duke of Welling- 
ton died. His end was singularly peaceful. He 
fell quietly asleep, about a quarter-past three in 
the afternoon, in Walmer Castle, and he did not 
wake any more. He was a very old man — in his 
eighty-fourth year — and his death had naturally 
been looked for as an event certain to come soon. 
Yet when it did come, thus naturally and peace- 
fully, it created a profound public emotion. No 
other man in our time ever held the position in 
England which the Duke of Wellington had oc- 
cupied for more than a whole generation. The 
place he had won for himself was absolutely 
unique. His great deeds belonged to a past time. 
He was hardly anything of a statesman ; he knew 
little and cared less about what may be called 
statecraft, and as an administrator he had made 
many mistakes. But the trust which the nation 
had in him as a counsellor was absolutely un- 
limited. It never entered into the mind of any- 
one to suppose that the Duke of Wellington was 
actuated in any step he took, or advice he gave, 
by any feeling but a desire for the good of the 
State. His loyalty to the Sovereign had some- 
thing antique and touching in it. There was a 
blending of personal affection with the devotion 
of a state servant which lent a certain romantic 
dignity to the demeanor and character of one 
who otherwise had but little of the poetical or 
the sentimental in his nature. In the business of 
politics he had but one prevailing anxiety, and 
that was that the Queen's Government should be 
satisfactorily carried on. He gave up again and 
again his own most cherished convictions, most 
ingrained prejudices, in order that he might not 
stand in the way of the Queen's Government 
and the proper carrying of it on. This simple 
fidelity, sometimes rather, whimsically displayed, 
stood him often in stead of an exalted statesman- 
ship, and enabled him to extricate the Govern- 
ment and the nation from difficulties in which a 
political insight far more keen than his might 
have failed to prove a guide. 

It was for this simple and unswerving devo- 
tion to the national good that the people of Eng- 
land admired and revered him. He had not what 
would be called a lovable temperament, and yet the 
nation loved him. He was cold and brusque in 
manner, and seemed in general to have hardly a 
gleam of the emotional in him. This was not 
because be Licked affections. On the contrary, 
his affections and his friendships were warm and 
enduring ; and even in public he had more than 
once given way to outbursts of emotion such as a 
stranger would never have expected from one of 
that cold and rigid demeanor. When Sir Rob- 
ert Peel died Wellington spoke of him in the 
House of Lords with the tears, which he did not 
even try to control, running down his cheeks. 
But in his ordinary bearing there was little of 
the manner that makes a man a popular idol. 
He was not brilliant or dashing, or emotional or 
graceful. He was dry, cold, self-contained. Yet 
the people loved him and trusted in him ; loved 
him, perhaps, especially because they so trusted 
in him. The nation was not ungrateful. It 
heaped honors on Wellington ; it would have 
heaped more on him if it knew how. It gave 
him its almost unqualified admiration. On his 
death it tried to give him such a public funeral 
as hero never had. 

The new Parliament was called together in 
November. It brought into public life in Eng- 
land a man who afterwards made some mark in 
our politics, and whose intellect and debating 
power seemed at one time to promise him a po- 
sition inferior to that of hardly any one in the 
House of Commons. This was Mr. Robert 
Lowe, who had returned from one of the Aus- 
tralian colonies to enter political life in his na- 
tive country. Mr. Lowe was a scholar of a highly 
cultured order; and, despite some serious de- 
fects of delivery, he proved to be a debater of 
the very highest class, especially gifted with the 
weapons of sarcasm, scorn, and invective. He 
was a Liberal in the intellectual sense ; he was 
opposed to all restraints on education and on the 
progress of a career; but he had a detestation 
for democratic doctrines which almost amounted 



to a mania. With the whole force of a temper- 
ament very favorable to intellectual scorn he de- 
spised alike the rural Tory and the town Radical. 
His opinions were generally rather negative than 
positive. He did not seem to have any very pos- 
itive opinions of any kind where politics were 
concerned. He was governed by a detestation of 
abstractions and sentimentalities, and "views" 
of all sorts. If contempt for the intellectual 
weaknesses of an opposing party or doctrine 
could have made a great politician, Mr. Lowe 
would have won that name. In politics, how- 
ever, criticism is not enough. One must be able 
to originate, to mould the will of others, to com- 
promise, to lead while seeming to follow, often to 
follow while seeming to lead. Of gifts like these 
Mr. Lowe had no share. He never became more 
than a great Parliamentary critic of the acrid 
and vitriolic style. 

Almost immediately on the assembling of the 
new Parliament, Mr. Villiers brought forward a 
resolution not merely pledging the House of Com- 
mons to a Free-trade policy, but pouring out a 
sort of censure on all who had hitherto failed to 
recognize its worth. This step was thought nec- 
essary, and was indeed made necessary, by the 
errors of which Lord Derby had been guilty, and 
the preposterous vaporings of some of his less 
responsible followers. If the resolution had been 
passed the Government must have resigned. 
But Lord Palmerston devised an amendment 
which afforded them the means of a more or less 
honorable retreat. This resolution pledged th« 
House to the "policy of unrestricted competition 
firmly maintained and prudently extended ;" but 
recorded no panegyric of the legislation of 1846, 
and consequent condemnation of those who op- 
posed that legislation. The amendment was ac- 
cepted by all but the small band of irreconcilable 
Protectionists : 468 voted for it, only 53 against 
it ; and the moan of Protection was made. 

Still, the Government existed only on suffer- 
ance. There was a general expectation that the 
moment Mr. Disraeli came to set out a genuins 
financial scheme the fate of the Administration 
would be decided. So the event proved. Mr. 
Disraeli made a financial statement which show- 
ed remarkable capacity for dealing with figures. 
The skill with which the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer explained his measures and tossed his 
figures about convinced many even of his strong- 
est opponents that he had the capacity to make 
a good budget, if he only were allowed to do so 
by the conditions of his party's existence. But 
his Cabinet had come into office under special 
obligations to the country party and the farmers. 
They could not avoid making some experi- 
ment in the way of special legislation for the 
farmer. They had at the very least to put on 
an appearance of doing something for them. 
When Mr. Disraeli undertook to favor the coun- 
try interest and the farmers he must have known 
only too well that he was setting all the Free- 
traders and Peelites against him ; and he knew 
at the same time that if he neglected the coun- 
try party he was cutting the ground from beneath 
his feet. The principle of his budget was the re- 
duction of the malt duties and the increase of the 
inhabited house duty. That reduction created a 
deficit, in order to supply which the inhabited 
house duty had to be doubled. The scheme 
was a complete failure. The farmers did not 
care much about the concession which had been 
made in their favor — those who would have had 
to pay for it in double taxation were bitterly 
indignant. The Whigs, the Free-traders, the 
Peelites, and such independent members or un- 
attached members as Mr. Lowe and Mr. Bernal 
Osborne, all fell on Mr. Disraeli. It became a 
combat a outrance. It well suited Mr. Disraeli's 
peculiar temperament. During the whole of his 
Parliamentary career he never fought so well as 
when he was free to indulge to the full the cour- 
age of despair. 

The debate was one of the finest of its kind 
ever heard in Parliament during our time. The 
excitement on both sides was intense. The ri- 
valry was hot and eager. Mr. Disraeli was ani- 
mated by all the power of desperation, and was 
evidently in a mood neither to give nor to take 
quarter. The House had hardly heard the con- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



29 



eluding word of Disraeli's bitter and impassion- 
ed speech, when, at two o'clock in the morning, 
Mr. Gladstone leaped to his feet to answer him. 
Then began that long Parliamentary duel which 
only knew a truce when, at the close of the ses- 
sion of 1876, Mr. Disraeli crossed the threshold 
of the House of Commons for the last time, 
thenceforward to take his place among the peers 
as Lord Beaconsfield. The rivalry of this first 
heated and eventful night was a splendid display. 
Those who thought it impossible that any impres- 
sion eonld be made upon the House after the 
speech of Mr. Disraeli had to acknowledge that 
a yet greater impression was produced by the 
unprepared reply of Mr. Gladstone. The House 
divided about four o'clock in the morning, and 
the Government were left in a minority of nine- 
teen. That day the resignation of the Ministry- 
was formally placed in the hands of the Queen. 
In a few days after the Coalition Ministry was 
formed. Lord Aberdeen was Prime-minister ; 
Lord John Russell took the Foreign Office ; Lord 
Palmerston became Home Secretary ; Mr. Glad- 
stone was Chancellor of the Exchequer. The 
public were a good deal surprised that Lord 
Palmerston had taken such a place as that of 
Home Secretary. His name had been identi- 
fied with the fureign policy of England, and it 
was not supposed that he felt the slightest inter- 
est in the ordinary business of the Home Depart- 
ment. But Palmerston would not consent to be 
Foreign Secretary on any terms but his own, 
and these terms were then out of the question. 

The principal interest felt in the new Govern- 
ment was centred in the new Chancellor of the 
Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone was still a young 
man in the Parliamentary sense at least. He 
was but forty- three. His career had been in 
every way remarkable. He had entered public 
life at a very early age. He had been a dis- 
tinguished debater in the House of Commons 
ever since he was one-and-twenty. Mr. Glad- 
stone was born in Liverpool, and was the son of 
Sir John Gladstone, a Scotchman, who founded 
a great house in the seaport of the Mersey. He 
entered Parliament when very young as a pro- 
tege of the Newcastle family, and he soon faith- 
fully attached himself to Sir Robert Peel. His 
knowledge of finance, his thorough appreciation 
of the various needs of a nation's commerce and 
business, his middle-class origin, all brought him 
into natural affinity with his great leader. He 
became a Free-trader with Peel. He was not 
in the House of Commons, oddly enough, dur- 
ing the session when the Free-trade battle was 
fought and won. As he had changed his opin- 
ions with his leader, he felt a reluctance to ask 
the support of the Newcastle family for the 
borough which he had previously represented 
by virtue of their influence. Rut except for 
that short interval his whole career may be pro- 
nounced one long Parliamentary success. He 
was from the very outset recognized as a brilliant 
debater, and as one who promised to be an ora- 
tor; but the first really great speech made by 
Mr. Gladstone was the reply to Mr. Disraeli on 
the memorable December morning which we 
have just described. That speech put him in the 
very foremost rank of English orators. Then 
perhaps he first showed to the full the one great 
quality in which as a Parliamentary orator he 
has never had a rival in our time: the readiness 
which seems to require no preparation, but can 
marshal all its arguments as if by instinct at a 
given moment, and the fluency which can pour 
out the most eloquent language as freely as 
though it were but the breath of the nostrils. 

When, shortly after the formation of the Co- 
alition Ministry, Mr. Gladstone delivered his first 
budget, it was regarded as a positive curiosity 
of financial exposition. It was a performance 
that belonged to the department of the fine arts. 
The speech occupied several hours, and assuredly 
no listener wished it the shorter by a single sen- 
tence. Each time that he essayed the same task 
subsequently he accomplished just the same suc- 
cess. Mr. Gladstone's first oratorical qualifica- 
tion was his exquisite voice. Such a voice would 
make common-place seem interesting and lend 
something of fascination to dulness itself. It 
was singularly pure, clear, resonant, and sweet. 



The orator never seemed to use the slightest 
effort or strain in filling any hall and reaching 
the ear of the farthest among the audience. It 
was not a loud voice or of great volume, but 
strong, vibrating, and silvery. The words were 
always aided by energetic action and by the deep- 
gleaming eyes of the orator. It is not to be de- 
nied that his wonderful gift of words sometimes 
led him astray. It was often such a fluency as 
that of a torrent on which the orator was carried 
away. Gladstone had to pay for his fluency by 
being too fluent. Sometimes he involved his sen- 
tence in parenthesis within parenthesis until the 
ordinary listener began to think extrication an 
impossibility ; but the orator never failed to un- 
ravel all the entanglements and to bring the 
passage out to a clear and legitimate conclusion. 

Often, however, this superb, exuberant rush of 
words added indescribable strength to the elo- 
quence of the speaker. In passages of indignant 
remonstrance or denunciation, when word fol- 
lowed word, and stroke came down upon stroke, 
with a wealth of resource that seemed inexhaust- 
ible, the very fluency and variety of the speaker 
overwhelmed his audience. Interruption only 
gave him a new stimulus, and appeared to sup- 
ply him with fresh resources of argument and 
illustration. His retorts leaped to his lips. Mr. 
Gladstone had not much humor of the playful 
kind, but he had a certain force of sarcastic and 
scornful rhetoric. He was always terribly in 
earnest. Whether the subject were great or 
small, he threw his whole soul into it. Once, 
in addressing a schoolboy gathering, he told his 
young listeners that if a boy ran he ought al- 
ways to ran as fast as he could ; if he jumped, 
he ought always to jump as far as he could. He 
illustrated his maxim in his own career. He 
had no idea apparently of running or jumping in 
such measure as happened to please the fancy of 
the moment. He always exercised his splendid 
powers to the uttermost strain. Probably no one, 
past or present, had in combination so many gifts 
of voice, manner, fluency and argument, style, 
reason and passion, as Mr. Gladstone. 

Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into Liberal con- 
victions. At the time when he joined the Coali- 
tion Ministry he was still regarded as one who 
had scarcely left the camp of Toryism, and who 
had only joined that Ministry because it was a 
coalition. Years after he was applied to by the 
late Lord Derby to join a Ministry formed by 
him ; and it was not supposed that there was 
anything unreasonable in the proposition. The 
first impulse towards Liberal principles was given 
to his mind probably by his change with his 
leader from Protection to Free-trade. When a 
man like Gladstone saw that his traditional 
principles and those of his party had broken 
down in any one direction, it was but natural 
that he should begin to question their en- 
durance in other directions. When Mr. Glad- 
stone came to be convinced that there was no 
such law as the Protection principle at all ; that 
it was a mere sham ; that to believe in it was to 
be guilty of an economic heresy — then it was im- 
possible for him not to begin questioning the 
genuineness of the whole system of political 
thought of which it formed but a part. Per- 
haps, too, he was impelled towards Liberal prin- 
ciples at home by seeing what the effects of op- 
posite doctrines had been abroad. He rendered 
memorable service to the Liberal cause of Eu- 
rope by his eloquent protest against the brutal 
treatment of Baron Poerio and other Liberals of 
Naples who were imprisoned by the Neapolitan 
King — a protest which Garibaldi declared to have 
sounded the first trumpet-call of Italian liberty. 
In rendering service to Liberalism and to Eu- 
rope he rendered service also to his own intelli- 
gence. He helped to set free his own spirit as 
well as the Neapolitan people. The common 
taunts addressed to public men who have changed 
their opinions were hardly ever applied to him. 
Even his enemies felt that the one idea always 
inspired him — a conscientious anxiety to do the 
right thing. The worst thing that was said of 
him was, that he was too impulsive, and that his 
intelligence was too restless. He was an essay- 
ist, a critic, a Homeric scholar ; a dilettante in 
art, music, and old china ; he was a theological 



controversialist ; he was a political economist, a 
financier, a practical administrator whose gift of 
mastering details has hardly ever been equalled ; 
he was a statesman and an orator. No man 
could attempt so many things and not occasion- 
ally make himself the subject of a sneer. The 
intense gravity and earnestness of Gladstone's 
mind always, however, saved him from the spec- 
ial penalty of such versatility. 

As yet, however, he is only the young states- 
man who was the other day the hope of the 
more solemn and solid Conservatives, and in 
whom they have not even yet entirely ceased to 
put some faith. The Coalition Ministry was so 
formed that it was not supposed a man neces- 
sarily nailed his colors to any mast when he 
joined it. More than one of Gladstone's earliest 
friends and political associates had a part in it. 
The Ministry might undoubtedly be called an 
Administration of All the Talents. Except the 
late Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, it included 
almost every man of real ability who belonged 
to either of the two great parties of the State. 
The Manchester School had, of course, no 
place there; but they were not likely just yet to 
be recognized as constituting one of the elements 
out of which even a Coalition Ministry might be 
composed. 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE CRIMEAN \TAR. 

For forty years England had been at peace. 
There had, indeed, been little wars here and 
there with some of her Asiatic and African 
neighbors, but from Waterloo downward Eng- 
land knew no real war. The new generation 
were growing up in a happy belief that wars 
were things of the past for us, like the wearing 
of armor. During all the convulsions of the 
Continent, England had remained undisturbed. 
A new school as well as a new generation had 
sprung up. This school, fidl of faith, but full 
of practical, shrewd logic as well, was teaching 
with great eloquence and effect that the practice 
of settling international controversy by the sword 
was costly, barbarous, and blundering as well as 
wicked. The practice of the duel in England 
had utterly gone out. Why, then, should it be 
unreasonable to believe that war among nations 
might soon become equally obsolete? 

Such certainly was the faith of a great many 
intelligent persons at the time when the Coali- 
tion Ministry was formed. The majority tacitly 
acquiesced in the belief without thinking much 
about it. They had never in their time seen 
England engaged in European war ; and it was 
natural to assume that what they had never seen 
they were never likely to see. Suddenly all this 
happy, quiet faith was disturbed by the Eastern 
"question" — the question of what to do with 
the East of Europe. It was certain that things 
could not remain as they then were, and nothing 
else was certain. The Ottoman power had 
been settled during many centuries in the 
South-east of Europe. The Turk had many of 
the strong qualities and even the virtues of a 
great warlike conqueror; but he had no capa- 
city or care for the arts of peace. He never 
thought of assimilating himself to those whom 
he had conquered, or them to him. The Turks 
were not, as a rule, oppressive to the races that 
lived under them. They were not habitual per- 
secutors of the faiths they deemed heretical. 
Every now and then, indeed, some sudden fierce 
outburst of fanatical cruelty towards some of the 
subject sects horrified Europe, and reminded her 
that the conqueror who had settled himself down 
in her south-eastern corner was still a barbarian 
who had no right or place in civilized life. But 
as a ride the Turk was disposed to look with dis- 
dainful composure on what he considered the re- 
ligious follies of the heretical races who did not 
believe in the Prophet. They were objects of 
his scornful pity rather than of his anger. 

At one time there is no doubt that all the pow- 
ers of civilized Europe would gladly have seen 
the Turk driven out of our continent. But the 
Turk was powerful for a long series of genera- 
tions, and it seemed for a while rather a question 
whether he would not send the Europeans out 
of their own grounds. When he began to decay, 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



and when his aggressive strength was practically 
all gone, it might have been thought that the 
Western powers would then have managed some- 
how to get rid of him. But in the meantime 
the condition of Europe had greatly changed. 
No one not actually subject to the Turk was 
afraid of him any more ; and other States had 
arisen strong for aggression. The uncertain- 
ties of these States as to the intentions of their 
neighbors and each other proved a better bul- 
wark for the Turks than any warlike strength 
of their own could any longer have furnished. 
The growth of the Russian empire was of itself 
enough to change the whole conditions of the 
problem. 

Nothing in our times has been more remark- 
able than the sudden growth of Russia. A few 
generations ago Russia was literally an inland 
State. She was shut up in the heart of Eastern 
Europe as if in a prison. The genius, the craft, 
and the audacity of Peter the Great first broke 
the narrow bounds set to the Russia of his day, 
and extended her frontier to the sea. He was 
followed, after a reign or two, by the greatest 
woman probably who ever sat on a throne, Eliza- 
beth of England not even excepted. Catherine 
the Second so ably followed the example of Peter 
the Great that she extended the Russian frontiers 
in directions which he had not had opportunity 
to stretch to. By the time her reign was done 
Russia was one of the great powers of Europe, 
entitled to enter into negotiations on a footing 
of equality with the proudest States of the 
Continent. Unlike Turkey, Russia had always 
shown a yearning after the latest developments 
of science and civilization. A nation that tries 
to appear more civilized than it really is ends 
very often by becoming more civilized than its 
neighbors ever thought it likely to be. 

The wars against Napoleon brought Russia 
into close alliance with England, Austria, Prus- 
sia, and other European States of old and ad- 
vanced civilization. She was recognized as a 
valuable friend and a most formidable enemy. 
Gradually it became evident that she could be 
aggressive as well as conservative. After a 
while it grew to be a fixed conviction in the mind 
of the Liberalism of Western Europe that Russia 
was the greatest obstacle then existing in civili- 
zation to the spread of popular ideas. The Turk 
was comparatively harmless in that sense. He 
was well content now, so much had his ancient 
ambition shrunk and his ancient war spirit gone 
out, if his strong and restless neighbor would 
only let him alone. But he was brought at 
more than one point into especial collision with 
Russia. Many of the provinces he ruled over in 
European Turkey were of Sclavonian race, and 
of the religion of the Greek Church. They were 
thus affined by a double tie to the Russian peo- 
ple, and therefore the manner in which Turkey 
dealt with those provinces was a constant source 
of dispute between Russia and her. The Rus- 
sians are a profoundly religious people. A Rus- 
sian Emperor could not be loved if he did not 
declare his undying resolve to be the protector 
of the Christian populations of Turkey. Much 
of this was probably sincere and single-minded 
on the part of the Russian people and most of 
the Russian politicians. But the other States of 
Europe began to suspect that mingled up with 
benign ideas of protecting the Christian popula- 
tions of Turkey might be a desire to extend the 
frontier of Russia to the southward in a new di- 
rection. Europe had seen by what craft and 
what audacious enterprises Russia had managed 
to extend her empire to the sea in other quar- 
ters ; it began to be commonly believed that her 
next object of ambition would be the possession 
of Constantinople and the Bosphorns. It was re- 
ported that a will of Peter the Great had left it 
as an injunction to his successors to turn all the 
efforts of their policy towards that object. The 
particular document which was believed to be a 
will of Peter the Great enjoined on all succeed- 
ing Russian sovereigns never to relax in the ex- 
tension of their territory northward on the Baltic 
and southward on the Black Sea shores, and to 
encroach as far as possible in the direction of 
Constantinople and the Indies. It, therefore, 
seemed to be the natural business of other Euro- 



pean powers to see that the defects of the Otto- ' 
man Government, such as they were, should not 
be made an excuse for helping Russia to secure 
the objects of her special ambition. England of 
course, above all the rest, had an interest in 
watching over every movement that threatened 
in any way to interfere with the highway to In- 
dia ; still more her peaceful and secure possession 
of India itself. England, Russia, and Turkey 
were alike in one respect : they were all Asiatic 
as well as European powers. But the days of 
Turkey's interfering with any great State were '. 
long over. On the contrary, there seemed some- 
thing like a natural antagonism between Eng- 
land and Russia in the East. The Russians 
were extending their frontier towards that of our 
Indian empire. Our officers and diplomatic em- 
issaries reported that they were continually con- 
fronted by the evidences of Russian intrigue in 
Central Asia. We have already seen how much 
influence the real or supposed intrigues of Russia 
had in directing our policy iu Afghanistan. It 
was in great measure out of these alarms that 
there grew up among certain statesmen and 
classes in this country the conviction that the 
maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish em- 
pire was part of the national duty of England. 

Sharply defined, the condition of things was 
this : Russia, by reason of her sympathy of relig- 
ion or race with Turkey's Christian populations, 
was brought into chronic antagonism with Tur- 
key ; England, by reason of her Asiatic posses- 
sions, was kept in just the same state of antago- 
nism to Russia. A crisis at last arose that threw 
England into direct hostility with Russia. 

That crisis came about during the later years 
of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas. He saw 
its opening, but not its close. Nicholas was a 
man of remarkable character. He had many of 
the ways of an Asiatic despot. He had a strong 
ambition, a fierce and fitful temper, a daring but 
sometimes too a vacillating will. He had many 
magnanimous and noble qualities, and moods of 
sweetness and gentleness. A certain excitability 
ran through the temperament of all his house, 
which, in some of its members, broke into actual 
madness. The Emperor at one time was very 
popular in England. He had visited the Queen, 
and he had impressed every one by his noble 
presence, his lofty stature, his singular personal 
beauty, his blended dignity and familiarity of 
manner. He talked as if he had no higher am- 
bition than to be in friendly alliance with Eng- 
land. When he wished to convey his impression 
of the highest degree of personal loyalty and 
honor he always spoke of " the word of an 
English gentleman." There can, indeed, be little 
doubt that the Emperor was sincerely anxious 
to keep on terms of cordial friendship with 
England ; and, what is more, bad no idea until 
the very last that the way' he was walking was 
one which England could not consent to tread. 
His brother and predecessor had been in close 
alliance with England ; his own ideal hero was 
the Duke of Wellington ; he had made up his 
mind that when the division of the spoils of 
Turkey came about, England and he could best 
consult for their own interests and the peace of 
the world by making the appropriation a matter 
of joint arrangement. 

When he visited England in 1844, for the sec- 
ond time, Nicholas had several conversations with 
the Duke of Wellington and with Lord Aber- 
deen, then Foreign Secretary, about Turkey and 
her prospects, and what would be likely to hap- 
pen in the case of her dissolution, which he be- 
lieved to be imminent. When he returned to 
Russia he had a memorandum drawn up by Count 
Nesselrode, his Chancellor, embodying the views 
which, according to Nicholas's impressions, were 
entertained alike by him and by the British 
statesmen with whom he had been conversing. 
The memorandum spoke of the imperative ne- 
cessity of Turkey being made to keep her engage- 
ments and to treat her Christian subjects with 
toleration and mildness. On such conditions it 
was laid down that England and Russia must 
alike desire her preservation ; but the document 
proceeded to say that nevertheless these States 
could not conceal from themselves the fact that 
the Ottoman empire contained within itself many 



elements of dissolution, and that unforeseen 
events might at any time hasten its fall. "In 
the uncertainty which hovers over the future a 
single fundamental idea seems to admit of a real- 
ly practical application ; that is, that' the danger 
which may result from a catastrophe in Turkey 
will be much diminished if, in the event of its oc- 
curring, Russia and England have come to an un- 
derstanding as to the course to be taken by them 
in common. That understanding will be the 
more beneficial inasmuch as it will have the full 
assent of Austria, between whom and Russia 
there already exists an entire accord." This 
document was sent to London and kept in the 

chives of the Foreign Office. The Emperor 
of Russia evidently believed that his views were 
shared by English statesmen. Therefore, it is to 
be regretted that the English statesmen should 
have listened to Nicholas without saying some- 
thing very distinct to show that they were not 
admitting or accepting any combination of pur- 
pose; or that they should have received his 
memorandum without some clear disclaimer of 
their being in any way bound by its terms. We 
could scarcely have been too emphatic or too 
precise in conveying to the Emperor of Russia 
our determination to have nothing to do with 
any such conspiracy. 

Time went on, and the Emperor thought he 
saw an occasion for still more clearly explaining 
his plans and for reviving the supposed under- 
standing with England. Lord Aberdeen came 
into office as Prime-minister of this country — 
Lord Aberdeen, who was Foreign Secretary when 
Nicholas was in England in 1S44. In January, 
1853, the Emperor had several conversations with 
our minister, Sir G. Hamilton Seymour, about 
the future of Turkey, and the arrangements it 
might be necessary for England and Russia to 
make regarding it. The conversations were re- 
newed again and again afterwards. They all 
tended towards the one purpose. The Emperor 
urged that England and Russia ought to make 
arrangements beforehand as to the inheritance 
of the Ottoman in Europe before what he regard- 
ed as the approaching and inevitable day when 
the "sick man " — so the Emperor called Turkey 
— must come to die. If only England and Rus- 
sia could arrive at an understanding on the sub- 
ject, he declared that it was a matter of indiffer- 
ence to him what other powers might think or 
say. He spoke of the several millions of Chris- 
tians in Turkey whose rights he was called upon 
to watch over, and he remarked — the remark is 
of significance — that the right of watching over 
them was secured to him by treaty. The Em- 
peror was evidently under the impression that the 
interests of England and of Russia were united 
in this proposed transaction. He had no idea 
of anything but the most perfect frankness so far 
as we were concerned. But the English Govern- 
ment never, after the disclosures of Sir Hamilton 
Seymour, put any faith in Nicholas. They re- 
garded him as nothing better than a plotter. The 
English minister and the English Government 
could only answer the Emperor's overtures by 
saying that they did not think it quite usual to 
enter into arrangements for the spoliation of a 
friendly power, and that England had no desire 
to succeed to any of the possessions of Turkey. 

The conversations with Sir Hamilton Seymour 
formed but an episode in the history of the events 
that were then going on. There had long been 
going on a dispute about the Holy Places in Pal- 
estine. The claims of the Greek Church and 
those of the Latin Church were in antagonism 
there. The Emperor of Russia was the protect- 
or of the Greek Church ; the kings of France 
had long had the Latin Church under their pro- 
tection. The Holy Places to which the Latins 
raised a claim were the great church in Bethle- 
hem, the Sanctuary of the Nativity, the Tomb 
of the Virgin, the Stone of Anointing, the Seven 
Arches of the Virgin in the Church of the Holy 
Sepulchre. In the reign of Francis the First of 
France a treaty was made with the Sultan by 
which France was acknowledged the protector of 
the Holy Places in Palestine, and of the monks 
of the Latin Church who took on themselves the 
care of the sacred monuments and memorials. 
But the Greek Church afterwards obtained fir- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



31 



mans from the Sultan ; and the Greeks claimed, 
on the strength of these concessions, that they 
had as good a right as the Latins to take care 
of the Holy Places. Disputes were always ari: 
ing, and of course these were aggravated by the 
fact that France was supposed to be concerned 
in the protection of one set of disputants and 
Russia in that of another. The claims at length 
came to be identified with the States which re- 
spectively protected them. An advantage of the 
smallest kind gained by the Latins was viewed as 
an insult to Russia ; a concession to the Greeks 
was a snub to France. 

It was France which first stirred the contro- 
versy in the time just before the Crimean War. 
The French ambassador, M. de Lavalette, is said 
to have threatened that a French fleet should 
appear oft' Jaffa, and even hinted at a French 
occupation of Jerusalem, "when," as he signifi- 
cantly put it, "we should have all the sanctua- 
ries." The cause of all this energy is not far to 
seek. The Prince President had only just suc- 
ceeded in procuring himself to be installed as 
Emperor, and he was very anxious to distract 
the attention of Frenchmen from domestic poli- 
tics to some showy and startling policy abroad. 
This controversy between the Church of the East 
and the Church of the West tempted him into 
activity, as one that seemed likely to give him 
an opportunity of displaying the power of France 
and of the new system without any very great 
danger or responsibility. 

The key of the whole controversy out of which 
the Eastern war arose, and out of which, indeed, 
all subsequent complications in the East came 
as well, was said to be found in a clause of the 
Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji. The Treaty of 
Kutchuk-Kainardji was made on July 10, 1774, 
between the Ottoman Porte and Catherine II. 
of Russia, after a war in which the arms of the 
great Empress had been completely victorious. 
The seventh clause declared that the Sublime 
Porte promised " to protect constantly the Chris- 
tian religion and its churches: and also to allow 
the minister of the Imperial Court of Russia to 
make on all occasions representations as well in 
favor of the new church in Constantinople, of 
which mention will be made in the fourteenth 
article, as in favor of those who officiate therein, 
promising to take such representations into due 
consideration, as being made by a confidential 
functionary of a neighboring and sincerely friend- 
ly power." Not much possibility of misunder- 
standing about these words, one might feel in- 
clined to say. We turn then to the fourteenth 
article alluded to, in order to discover if in its 
wording lies the perplexity of meaning which 
led to such momentous and calamitous results. 
We find that by this article it is simply permit- 
ted to the Court of Russia to build a public 
church of the Greek rite in the Galata quarter 
of Constantinople, in addition to the chapel built 
in the house of the minister; and it is declared 
that the new church "shall he always under the 
protection of the ministers of the (Russian) em- 
pire, and shielded from all obstruction and all 
damage." Here, then, we seem to have two 
clauses of the simplest meaning and by no means 
of first-class importance. The latter clause al- 
lows Russia to build a new church in Constan- 
tinople; the former allows the Russian minister 
to make representations to the Porte on behalf 
of the church and of those who officiate in it. 
What difference of opinion, it may lie asked. 
could possibly arise? The difference was this: 
Russia claimed a right of protectorate over all 
the Christians of the Greek Church in Turkey 
as the consequence of the seventh clause of the 
treaty. She insisted that when Turkey gave her 
a right to interfere on behalf of the worshippers 
in one particular church, the same right extended 
so far as to cover all the worshippers of the same 
denomination in every part of the Ottoman do- 
minions. The great object of Russia through- 
out all the negotiations that preceded the Crimean 
War was to obtain from the Porte an admission 
of the existence of such a protectorate. Such 
an acknowledgment would, in fact, have made 
the Emperor of Russia the patron and all but the 
rider of by far the larger proportion of the popu- 
lations of European Turkey. The Sultan would 



no longer have been master in his own domin- 
ions. The Greek Christians would naturally 
have regarded the Russian Emperor's right of 
intervention on their behalf as constituting a 
protectorate far more powerful than the nominal 
rule of the Sultan. They would have known 
that the ultimate decision of any dispute in 
which they were concerned rested with the Em- 
peror, and not with the Sultan ; and they would 
soon have come to look upon the Emperor, and 
not the Sultan, as their actual sovereign. . 

Now, it does not seem likely on the face of 
things that any ruler of a State would have con- 
sented to hand over to a more powerful foreign 
monarch such a right over the great majority of 
his subjects. Still, if Turkey, driven to her last 
defences, had no alternative but to make such a 
concession, the Emperors of Russia could not be 
blamed for insisting that it should be carried ont. 
The terms of the article in the treaty itself cer- 
tainly do not seem to admit of such a construc- 
tion. Whenever we find Russia putting a claim 
into plain words, we find England, through her 
ministers, refusing to give it their acknowledg- 
ment. Diplomacy, therefore, was powerless to 
do good during all the protracted negotiations 
that set in before the Crimean War, for the plain 
reason that the only object of the Emperor of 
Russia in entering upon negotiation at all was 
one which the other European powers regarded 
as absolutely inadmissible. 

The dispute about the Holy Places was easily 
settled. The Porte cared very little about the 
matter, and was willing enough to come to any 
fair terms by which the whole controversy could 
be got rid of. But the demands of Russia went 
on just as before. Prince Mentschikoff — a fierce, 
rough man, unable or unwilling to control his 
temper — was sent with demands to Constanti- 
nople. Mentschikoff brought his proposals with 
him cut and dry in the form of a convention, 
which he called upon Turkey to accept without 
more ado. Turkey refused, and Prince Ment- 
schikoff withdrew, in real or affected rage, and 
presently the Emperor Nicholas sent two divis- 
ions of his army across the Pruth to take posses- 
sion of the Danubian principalities. 

Diplomacy, however, did not give in even then. 
A note was concocted at Vienna which Russia at 
once offered to accept. The four great powers 
who were carrying on the business of mediation 
were at first quite charmed with the note, with 
the readiness of Russia to accept it, and with 
themselves; and but for the interposition of 
Lord Stratford de Redclitfe, our ambassador at 
Constantinople, who showed great ncuteness and 
force of character through all these negotiations, 
it seems highly probable that it would have been 
agreed to by all the parties concerned. Lord 
Stratford, however, saw plainly that the note was 
a virtual concession to Russia of all that she spe- 
cially desired to have, and all that Europe was 
unwilling to concede to her. It contained, for 
instance, words which declared that the Govern- 
ment of his Majesty the Sultan would remain 
" faithful to the letter and the spirit of the stip- 
ulations of the Treaties of Kainardji and of 
Adrianople, relative to the protection of the 
Christian religion." These words, in a note 
drawn up for the purpose of satisfying the Em- 
peror of Russia, could not but he understood as 
recognizing the interpretation of the Treaty of 
Kainardji on which Russia had always insisted. 
The Russian Government refused to accept any 
modifications. 

From that time all hopes of peace were over. 
Our troops were moving towards Malta; the 
streets of London, of Liverpool, of Southampton, 
and other towns, were ringing with the cheers 
of enthusiastic crowds gathered together to watch 
the marching of troops destined for the East. 
Turkey had actually declared war against Russia. 
We had known so little of war for nearly forty 
years, that added to all the other emotions which 
the coming of battle must bring was the mere 
feeling of curiosity as to the sensation produced 
by a state of war. It was an abstraction to the 
living generation — a thing to read of and discuss 
and make poetry and romance out of it — but 
they could not yet realize what itself was like. 

Meantime where was Lord Palmerston ? He 



of all men, one would think, must have been 
pleased with the turn things were taking. He 
was really very busy all this time in his new 
duties. Lord Palmerston was a remarkably 
efficient and successful Home Secretary. His 
unceasing activity loved to show itself in what- 
ever department he might be called upon to oc- 
cupy. He brought to the somewhat prosaic 
duties of his new office all the energy which he 
had formerly shown in managing revolutions 
and dictating to foreign courts. The ticket-of- 
leave system dates from the time of his admin- 
istration. The measure to abate the smoke 
nuisance, by compelling factories under penal- 
ties to consume their own smoke, is also the 
offspring of Palinerston's activity in the Home 
Office. The Factory Acts were extended by 
him. He went energetically to work in the 
shutting up of grave -yards in the metropolis. 
He was acquiring a new and a somewhat odd 
reputation in his way of answering deputations 
and letters. Lord Palmerston was always civil 
and cordial ; he was full of a peculiar kind of 
fresh common-sense, and always ready to apply 
it to any subject whatever. He could at any 
time say some racy thing which set the public 
wondering and laughing. He had not a poetic 
or philosophic mind. In clearing his intelligence 
from all that he would have called prejudice 
or superstition he had cleared out also much of 
the deeper sympathetic faculty which enables 
one man to understand the feelings and get at 
the springs of conduct in the breasts of other 
men. No one can doubt that his jaunty way of 
treating grave and disputed subjects offended 
many pure and simple minds. Yet it was a 
mistake to suppose that mere levity dictated his 
way of dealing with the prejudices of others. 
He had often given the question his deepest at- 
tention, and come to a conclusion with as much 
thought as his temperament would have allowed 
to any subject. The difference between him 
and graver men was, that when he had come to 
a conclusion seriously, he loved to express his 
views humorously. But there can be no doubt 
that Palmerston often made enemies by his 
seeming levity when another man could easily 
have made friends by saying just the same thing 
in grave words. The majority of the House of 
Commons liked him because he amused them 
and made them laugh ; and they thought no 
more of the matter. 

But the war is now fairly launched ; and Pal- 
merston is to all appearance what would be vul- 
garly called "out of the swim." Every eye was 
turned to him. One day it was given out that 
Palmerston had actually resigned. It was at 
once asserted that his resignation was caused by 
difference of opinion between him and his col- 
leagues on the Eastern policy of the Govern- 
ment. But on the other hand it was as stoutly 
affirmed that the difference of opinion had only 
to do with the new Reform Bill which Lord 
John Russell was preparing to introduce. Few 
people in England who cared anything about the 
whole question believed that at such a time Lord 
Palmerston would have gone out of office he- 
cause he did not quite like the details of a Re- 
form Bill, or that the Cabinet would have obsti- 
nately clung to such a scheme just then in spite 
of his opposition. When Lord Palmerston re- 
sumed his place in the Ministry the public at largo 
felt certain that the war spirit was now at last to 
have its way, ami that the dallj ings of the peace- 
lovers were over. Nor was England long left to 
guess at the reason why Lord Palmerston had 
so suddenly resigned his office, and so suddenly 
returned to it. A great disaster had fallen upon 
Turkey. Her fleet bad been destroyed by the 
Russians at Sinope, a considerable seaport town 
and naval station belonging to Turkey, on the 
southern shore of the Black Sea. on November 
30, 1853. The attack was not treacherous, but 
openly made ; not sudden, but clearly announced 
by previous acts. Russia and Turkey were not 
only formally but actually at war. The Turks 
were the first to begin the actual military opera- 
tions. But at the time, when the true state of 
affairs was little known in England, the account 
of the "massacre of Sinope" was received as if 
it had been the tale of some unparalleled act of 



32 



A SHORT HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



treachery and savagery ; and the eagerness of the I 
country for war against Russia became inflamed 
to actual passion. 

It was at that moment that Palmerston re- 
signed his office. The Cabinet were still not 
prepared to go as far as he would have gone. 
Lord Palmerston, supported by the urgent pres- 
sure of the Emperor of the French, succeeded, 
however, in at last overcoming their determina- 
tion ; and Lord Palmerston resumed his place, 
master of the situation. France and England 
told Russia that they were resolved to prevent 
any repetition of the Sinope affair; that their 
squadrons would enter the Black Sea, with orders 
to request, and if necessary to constrain, every 
Russian ship met in the Euxine to return to 
Sebastopol ; and to repel by force any act of ag- 
gression afterwards attempted against the Otto- 
man territory or flag. This was, in fact, war. 
When the resolution of the Western Cabinets 
was communicated to the Emperor of Russia he 
withdrew his representatives from London and 
Paris. On February 21, 1854, the diplomatic 
relations between Russia and the two allied pow- 
ers were brought to a stop. Six weeks before 
this the English and French fleets had entered 
the Black Sea. A few days after a crowd as- 
sembled in front of the Royal Exchange to watch 
the performance of a ceremonial that had been 
little known to the living generation. The Ser- 
geant-at-Arms, accompanied by some of the of- 
ficials of the City, read from the steps of the 
Royal Exchange her Majesty's declaration of 
war against Russia. 

The principal reason for the separation of the 
two Western powers of Europe from the other 
great States was found in the condition of Prus- 
sia. The Prussian sovereign was related to the 
Emperor of Russia, and his kingdom was almost 
overshadowed by Russian influence. Prussia had 
come to occupy a lower position in Europe than 
she had ever before held during her existence as 
a kingdom. The King of Prussia was a highly 
cultured, amiable, literary man. He loved let- 
ters and art in a sort of dilettante way ; he had 
good impulses and a weak nature; he was a 
dreamer; a sort of philosopher manque. He was 
unable to make up his mind to any momentous 
decision until the time for rendering it effective 
had gone by. A man naturally truthful, he was 
often led by very weakness into acts that seemed 
irreconcilable with his previous promises and en- 
gagements. He could say witty and sarcastic 
things, and when political affairs went wrong with 
him he could console himself with one or two 
sharp sayings, only heard of by those immediately 
around him ; and then the world might go its 
way for him. He went so far with the allies as 
to lead them for a while to believe that he was 
going all the way ; but at the last moment he 
broke off, declared that the interests of Prussia 
did not require or allow him to engage in a war, 
and left France and England to walk their own 
road. Austria could not venture upon such a 
war without the co-operation of Prussia. Austria 
and Prussia made an arrangement between them- 
selves for mutual defence, in case the progress of 
the war should directly imperil the interests of 
either; and England and France undertook in 
alliance the task of chastising the presumption 
and restraining the ambitious designs of Russia. 
It must be remembered that the controversy be- 
tween Russia and the West really involved sev- 
eral distinct questions, in some of which Prussia 
had absolutely no direct interest and Austria very 
little. Foremost among these was the question 
of the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bos- 
phorus. 

Russia and Turkey between them surrounded 
the whole of the Black Sea with their territory. 
The only outlet of Russia on the southern side is 
the Black Sea. The Black Sea is, save for one 
little outlet at its south-western extremity, a huge 
land-locked lake. That little outlet is the nar- 
row channel called the Bosphorus. The Bos- 
phorus is some seventeen miles in length, and in 
some places it is hardly more than half a mile in 
breadth. But it is very deep all through, so that 
ships of war can float close up to its very shores 
on either side. It passes between the city of 
Constantinople and its Asiatic suburb of Scutari, 



and then opens into the little Sea of Marmora. 
Out of the Sea of Marmora the way westward is 
through the channel of the Dardanelles, which 
forms the passage into the Archipelago, and 
thence into the Mediterranean. The channel of 
the Dardanelles is, like the Bosphorus, narrow 
and very deep, but it pursues its course for some 
forty miles. Any one who holds a map in his 
hand will see at once how Turkey and Russia 
alike are affected by the existence of the Straits 
on either extremity of the Sea of Marmora. 
Close up these Straits against vessels of war, and 
the capital of the Sultan is absolutely unassaila- 
ble from the sea. Close them, on the other hand, 
and the Russian fleet in the Black Sea is abso- 
lutely cut off from the Mediterranean and the 
Western world. But then -it has to be remem- 
bered that the same act of closing would secure 
the Russian ports and shores on the Black Sea 
from the approach of any of the great navies of 
the West. The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus 
being alike such narrow channels, and being edged 
alike by Turkish territory, were not regarded as 
high seas. Tlie Sultans always claimed the right 
to exclude foreign ships of war from both the 
Straits. The closing of the Straits had been the 
subject of a perfect succession of treaties. 

As matters stood, then, the Sultan was not 
only permitted but was bound to close the Straits 
in times of peace, and no navy might enter them 
without his consent even in times of war. By 
this treaty the Black Sea fleet of Russia became 
literally a Black Sea fleet, wholly cut off from 
the Mediterranean and Western Europe. Nat- 
urally Russia chafed at this ; but at the same 
time she was not willing to see the restriction 
withdrawn in favor of an arrangement that would 
leave the Straits, and consequently the Black 
Sea, open to the navies of France and England. 
Therefore it was natural that the ambition of 
Russia should tend towards the ultimate posses- 
sion of Constantinople and the Straits for her- 
self; but as this was an ambition the fulfilment 
of which seemed far off and beset with vast dan- 
gers, her object, meanwhile, was to gain as much 
influence and ascendency as possible over the 
Ottoman Government ; to make it practically her 
vassal, and in any case to prevent any other great 
power from obtaining the influence and ascend- 
ency which she coveted for herself. Now, the 
tendency of this ambition and of all the inter- 
mediate claims and disputes with regard to the 
opening or closing of the Straits was of impor- 
tance to Europe generally, as a part of Russian 
aggrandizement; but of the great powers they 
concerned England most ; France as a Mediter- 
ranean and a naval power ; Austria only in a 
third and remoter degree ; and Prussia at the 
time of King Frederick William least of all. 

To the great majority of the English people 
this war was popular, partly because of the nat- 
ural and inevitable reaction against the doctrines 
of peace and mere trading prosperity, partly too 
because of its novelty. The doctrines of the 
Peace Society had never taken any hold of this 
country at all. Its votaries were in any case not 
many at the time when the Crimean War broke 
out. They had very little influence on the course 
of the national policy. They were assailed with 
a flippant and a somewhat ignoble ridicule. The 
worst reproach that could be given to men like 
Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright was to accuse them 
of being members of the Peace Society. It 
does not appear that either man was a member 
of the actual organization. Mr. Bright's relig- 
ious creed made him necessarily a votary of 
peace ; Mr. Cobden had attended meetings called 
with the futile purpose of establishing peace 
among nations by the operation of good feeling 
and of common-sense. 

In the Cabinet itself there were men who dis- 
liked the idea of a war quite as much as they 
did. Lord Aberdeen detested war, and thought 
it so absurd a way of settling national disputes, 
that almost until the first cannon-shot had been 
fired he could not bring himself to believe in the 
possibility of the intelligent English people being 
drawn into it. Mr. Gladstone had a conscien- 
tious and a sensitive objection to war in general, 
as a brutal and an unchristian occupation, al- 
though his feelings would not have carried him 



so far away as to prevent his recognition of the- 
fact that war might often be a just, a necessary, 
and a glorious undertaking on the part of a civil- 
ized nation. The difficulties of the hour were 
considerably enhanced by the differences of opin- 
ion that prevailed in the Cabinet. 

There were other differences there as well as 
those that belonged to the mere abstract question 
of the glory or the guilt of war. It soon became 
clear that two parties of the Cabinet looked on 
the war and its objects with different eyes and 
interests. On one side there were Lord Aber- 
deen and Mr. Gladstone, who were concerned far 
more for the welfare of Turkey's Christian sub- 
jects than for the stability of Turkey or the hu- 
miliation of Russia. On the other side was Lord 
Palmerston, gay, resolute, clear as to his own 
purpose, convinced to the heart's core of every- 
thing which just then it was for the advantage 
of his cause to believe. The brave Turk had to 
be supported ; the wicked Russian had to be put 
down. It was impossible to doubt on which side 
were to be found the materials for the successful 
conduct of the enterprise which was now so pop- 
ular with the country. The most conscientious 
men might differ about the prudence or the mor- 
al propriety of the war ; but to those who once 
accepted its necessity and wished onr side to win 
there could be no possible doubt, even for mem- 
bers of the Peace Society, as to the importance 
of having Lord Palmerston either at the head of 
affairs or in charge of the war itself. The mo- 
ment the war actually broke out it became evi- 
dent to every one that Palmerston's interval of 
comparative inaction and obscurity was well-nigh 
over. 

England, then, and France entered the war 
as allies. Lord Raglan, formerly Lord Fitzroy 
Somerset, an old pupil of the Great Duke in the 
Peninsular War, and who had lost his right arm 
serving under Wellington at Waterloo, was ap- 
pointed to command the English forces. Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud, a bold, brilliant soldier of fort- 
une, was entrusted by the Emperor of the 
French with the leadership of the soldiers of 
France. The allied forces went out to the East 
and assembled at Varna, on the Black Sea 
shore, from which they were to make their de- 
scent on the Crimea. The invasion of the Cri- 
mea, however, was not welcomed by the English 
or the French commander. It was undertaken 
by Lord Raglan out of deference to the recom- 
mendations of the Government; and by Mar- 
shal St. Arnaud out of deference to the Emperor 
of the French. The allied forces were therefore 
conveyed to the south-western shore of the Cri- 
mea, and effected a landing in Kalamita Bay, a 
short distance north of the point at which the 
river Alma runs into the sea. Sebastopol itself 
lies about thirty miles to the south ; and then 
more southward still, divided by the bulk of a 
jutting promontory from Sebastopol, is the har- 
bor of Balaklava. The disembarkation began 
on the morning of September 14, 1854, and was 
effected without any opposition from the Rus- 
sians. On September 19 the allies marched out 
of their encampments and reached the Alma 
about noon on September 20. They found that 
they had to cross the river in the face of the 
Russian batteries armed with heavy guns on the 
highest points of the hills or bluffs, of scattered 
artillery, and of dense masses of infantry, which 
covered the hills. The Russians were under 
the command of Prince Mentschikoff. The 
soldiers of the Czar fought stoutly and stubborn- 
ly, as they have always done; but they could not 
stand up against the blended vehemence and 
obstinacy of the English and French. The riv- 
er was crossed, the opposite heights were mount- 
ed, Prince MentschikofTs great redoubt was car- 
ried, the Russians were driven from the field, 
the allies occupied their ground ; the victory 
was to the Western powers. The first field 
was fought, and we had won. 

The Russians ought to have been pursued. 
But there was no pursuit. Lord Raglan was 
eager to follow up the victory; but the French 
had as yet hardly any cavalry, and Marshal St. 
Arnaud would not agree to any farther enter- 
prise that day. Lord Raglan believed that he 
ought not to persist; and nothing was done. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



33 



Except for the bravery of those who fought, the 
battle was not much to boast of. But it was 
the first great battle which for nearly forty 
years our soldiers had fought with a civilized 
enemy. The military authorities and the coun- 
try were well disposed to make the most of it. 
The gallant medley on the banks of the Alma, 
and the fruitless interval of inaction that followed 
it, were told of as if men were speaking of some 
battle of the gods. Very soon, however, a dif- 
ferent note came to be sounded. The campaign 
had been opened under conditions differing from 
those of most campaigns that went before it. 
Science had added many new discoveries to the 
art of war. Literature had added one remark- 
able contribution of her own to the conditions 
amid which campaigns were to be carried on. 
She had added the "special correspondent.'' 
The war correspondent now scrawls his de- 
spatches as he sits in his saddle under the fire 
of the enemy; he scrawls them with a pencil, 
noting and describing each incident of the fight, 
so far as he can see it, as coolly as if he were 
describing a review of volunteers in Hyde Park ; 
and he contrives to send off his narrative by 
telegraph before the victor in the fight has be- 
gun to pursue, or has settled down to hold the 
ground he won ; and the war correspondent's 
story is expected to be as brilliant and pictur- 
esque in style as it ought to be exact and faith- 
ful in its statements. In the days of the Crimea 
things had not advanced quite so far as that ; 
the war was well on before the submarine tele- 
graph between Varna and the Crimea allowed 
of daily reports ; but the feats of the war corres- 
pondent then filled men's minds with wonder. 
When the expedition was leaving England it 
was accompanied by a special correspondent 
from each of the great daily papers of London. 
The Times sent out a representative whose 
name almost immediately became celebrated — 
Mr. William Howard Russell, the first of war 
correspondents in that day, as Mr. Archibald 
Forbes of the Daily news was at a later period. 
Mr. Russell rendered some service to the Eng- 
lish army and to his country, however, which no 
brilliancy of literary style would alone have en- 
abled him to do. It was to his great credit as a 
man of judgment and observation that, being 
a civilian who bad never before seen one purl' of 
war-smoke, he was able to distinguish between 
the confusion inseparable from all actual levying 
of war and the confusion that comes of distinct- 
ly bad administration. Mr. Russell soon saw 
that there was confusion ; and he had the 
soundness of judgment to know that the confu- 
sion was that of a breaking- down system. 
Therefore, while the fervor of delight in the 
courage and success of our army was still fresh 
in the minds of the public at home, while every 
music-hall was ringing with the cheap rewards 
of valor in the shape of popular glorifications of 
our commanders and our soldiers, the readers 
of the Times began to learn that things were 
faring badly indeed with the conquering army 
of the Alma. The ranks were thinned by the 
ravages of cholera. The hospitals were in a 
wretchedly disorganized condition. Stores of 
medicine and strengthening food were decaying 
in places where no one wanted them or could 
well get at them, while men were dying in hun- 
dreds among our tents in the Crimea for lack of 
them. The system of clothing, of transport, of 
feeding, of nursing — everything had broken 
down. The special correspondent of the Times 
and other correspondents continued to din these 
things into the ears of the public at home. Ex- 
ultation began to give way to a feeling of dis- 
may. The patriotic anger against the Russians 
was changed for a mood of deep indignation 
against our own authorities and our own war 
administration. It soon became apparent to 
every one that the whole campaign had been 
planned on the assumption of our military au- 
thorities here at home — we do not speak of the 
commanders in the field — that Sebastopol was 
to fall, like another Jericho, at the sound of the 
war-trumpet's blast. 

Oar commanders in the field were, on the con- 
trary, rather disposed to overrate than to under- 
rate the strength of the Russians. It is very 



likely that if a sudden dash had been made at 
Sebastopol by land and sea, it might have been 
taken almost at the very opening of the war. 
But the delay gave the Russians full warning; 
and they did not neglect it. On the third day 
after the battle of the Alma the Russians sank 
seven vessels of their Black Sea fleet at the en- 
trance of the harbor of Sebastopol, and the en- 
trance of the harbor was barred as by sunken 
rocks against any approach of an enemy's ship. 
There was an end to every dream of a sudden 
capture of Sebastopol. The allied armies moved 
again from their positions on the Alma to Balak- 
lava, which lies south of the city, on the other 
side of a promontory, and which has a port that 
might enable them to secure a constant means of 
communication between the armies and the fleets. 
Sebastopol was but a few miles off, and prepara- 
tions were at once made for an attack on it by 
land and sea. On October 17 the attack began. 
It was practically a failure. The fleet could not 
get near enough to the sea-forts of Sebastopol to 
make their broadsides of any real effect, because 
of the shallow water and the sunkSh ships; and 
although the attack from the land was vigorous 
and was fiercely kept up, yet it could not carry 
its object. 

The Russians attacked the allies fiercely on 
October ?5, in the hope of obtaining possession 
of Balaklava. The attempt was bold and brill- 
iant ; but it was splendidly repulsed. Never did 
a day of battle do more credit to English cour- 
age, or less perhaps to English generalship. The 
cavalry particularly distinguished themselves. It 
was in great measure on our side a cavalry ac- 
tion. It will be memorable in all English histo- 
ry as the battle in which occurred the famous 
charge of the Light Brigade. Owing to some 
fatal misconception of the meaning of an order 
from the Commander-in-chief, the Light Bri- 
gade, 607 men in all, charged what has been 
rightly described as "the Russian army in posi- 
tion." Of the G07 men 108 came back. Long, 
painful, and hopeless were the disputes about 
this fatal order. The controversy can never be 
wholly settled. The officer who bore the order 
was one of the first who fell in the outset. All 
Europe, all the world, rang with wonder and ad- 
miration of the futile and splendid charge. The 
Poet Laureate sang of it in spirited verses. Per- 
haps its best epitaph was contained in the cele- 
brated comment ascribed to the French General 
Bosquet, and which has since become proverbial, 
and been quoted until men are well-nigh tired 
of it — "It was magnificent, but it was not war." 

Next day the enemy made another vigorous 
attack, on a much larger scale, moving out of 
Sebastopol itself, and were again repulsed. On 
November 5 the Russians made another grand 
attack on the allies, chiefly on the British, and 
were once more splendidly repulsed. The pla- 
teau of Inkerman was the principal scene of the 
struggle. It was occupied by the Guards and a 
few British regiments, on whom fell, until Gen- 
eral Bosquet with his French was able to come 
to their assistance, the task of resisting a Russian 
army. This was the severest and the fiercest 
engagement of the campaign. Inkerman was 
described at the time as the soldiers' battle. 
Strategy, it was said everywhere, there was none. 
The attack was made under cover of a dark and 
drizzling mist. The battle was fought for a while 
almost absolutely in the dark. There was hardly 
any attempt to direct the allies by any principles 
of scientific warfare. The soldiers fought stub- 
bornly a series of hand-to-hand fights, and we 
are entitled to say that the better men won in 
the end. 

Meanwhile what were people saying in Eng- 
gland? They were indignantly declaring that 
the whole campaign was a muddle. The tem- 
per of a people thus stimulated and thus disap- 
pointed is almost always indiscriminating and 
unreasonable in its censure. The first idea is to 
find a victim. The victim on whom the anger 
of a large portion of the public turned in this 
instance was the Prince Consort. The most 
absurd ideas, the most cruel and baseless calum- 
nies, "ire in circulation about him. He was 
accused of having out of some inscrutable mo- 
tive made use of all his secret influence to pre- 

3 



vent the success of the campaign. He was 
charged with being in a conspiracy with Prussia, 
with Russia, with no one knew exactly whom, to 
weaken the strength of England, and secure a tri- 
umph for her enemies. Stories were actually told 
at one time of his having been arrested for high- 
treason. The charges which sprang out of this 
heated and unjust temper on the part of the pub- 
lic did not, indeed, long prevail against the Prince 
Consort. When once the subject came to be 
taken up in Parliament it was shown almost in a 
moment that there was not the slightest ground 
or excuse for any of the absurd surmises and 
cruel suspicions which had been creating so much 
agitation. The agitation collapsed in a mo- 
ment. But while it lasted it was both vehement 
and intense, and gave much pain to the Prince, 
and far more pain still to the Queen his wife. 

The winter was gloomy at home as well as 
abroad. The news constantly arriving from the 
Crimea told only of devastation caused by foes 
far more formidable than the Russians — sick- 
ness, bad weather, bad management. The Black 
Sea was swept and scourged by terrible storms. 
The destruction of transport-ships laden with 
winter stores for our men was of incalculable 
injury to the army. Clothing, blanketing, pro- 
visions, hospital necessaries of all kinds, were 
destroyed in vast quantities. The loss of life 
among the crews of the vessels was immense. 
A storm was nearly as disastrous in this way as 
a battle. On shore the sufferings of the army 
were unspeakable. The tents were torn from 
their pegs and blown away. The officers and 
men were exposed to the bitter cold and the 
fierce stormy blasts. Our soldiers had for the 
most part little experience or even idea of such 
cold as they had to encounter this gloomy winter. 
The intensity of the cold was so great that no 
one might dare to touch any metal substance in 
the open air with his bare band under the penal- 
ty of leaving the skin behind him. The hos- 
pitals for the sick and wounded at Scutari were 
in a wretchedly disorganized condition. They 
were for the most part in an absolutely chaotic 
condition as regards arrangement and supplv. 
In some instances medical stores were left "to 
decay at Varna, or were found lying useless in 
the holds of vessels in Balaklava bay, which were 
needed for the wounded at Scutari. The medi- 
cal officers were able and zealous men ; the 
stores were provided and paid for, so far as our 
Government was concerned ; but the stores were 
not brought to the medical men. These had 
their hands all hut idle, their eyes and souls tor- 
tured by the sight of sufferings which they were 
unable to relieve for want of the commonest 
appliances of the hospital. The most extraordi- 
nary instances of blunder and confusion were 
constantly coming to light. Great consignments 
of boots arrived, and were found to be all for the 
left foot. Mules for the conveyance of stores 
were contracted for and delivered, but delivered 
so that they came into the hands of the Rus- 
sians and not of us. Shameful frauds were per- 
petrated in the instance of some of the contracts 
for preserved meat. The evils of the hospital 
disorganization were, happily, made a means of 
bringing about a new system of attending to the 
sick and wounded in war which has already cre- 
ated something like a revolution in the manner 
of treating the victims of battle. Sir. Sidney 
Herbert, horrified at the way in which things 
were managed in Scutari and the Crimea, ap- 
plied to a distinguished woman who had long 
taken a deep interest in hospital reform to su- 
perintend personally the nursing of the soldiers. 
Miss Florence Nightingale was the daughter of 
a wealthy English country gentleman. She had 
chosen not to pass her life in fashionable or aes- 
thetic inactivity, and bad from a very early pe- 
riod turned her attention to sanitary questions. 
She had studied nursing as a science and a svs- 
tem ; had made herself acquainted with the 
working of various Continental institutions; and 
about the time when the war broke out she was 
actually engaged in reorganizing the Sick Gov- 
ernesses' Institution, in Hurley Street. London. 
To her Mr. Sidney Herbert turned, lie offered 
her, if she would accept the task he proposed, 
plenary authority over all the nurses, and an un- 



34 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



limited power of drawing on the Government for 
whatever she might think necessary to the suc- 
cess of her undertaking. Miss Nightingale ac- 
cepted the task, and went out to Scutari accom- 
panied by some women of rank like her own, and 
a trained staff of nurses. They speedily reduced 
chaos into order; and from the time of their 
landing in Scutari there was at least one de- 
partment of the business of war which was never 
again a subject of complaint. The spirit of the 
chivalric days had been restored under better 
auspices for its abiding influence. Sidney Her- 
bert, in his letter to Miss Nightingale, had said 
that her example, if she accepted the task he 
proposed, would "multiply the good to all time." 
These words proved to have no exaggeration in 
them. We have never seen a war since in which 
women of education and of genuine devotion have 
not given themselves up to the task of caring for 
the wounded. The Geneva Convention and the 
bearing of the Red Cross are among the results of 
Florence Nightingale's work in the Crimea. 

But the siege of Sebastopol was meanwhile 
dragging heavily along ; and sometimes it was 
not quite certain which ought to be called the 
besieged, the Russians in the city or the allies 
encamped in sight of it. During some months 
the armies did little or nothing. The commis- 
sariat system and the land transport system had 
broken down. The armies were miserably weak- 
ened by sickness. Cholera was ever and anon 
raging anew among our men. Horses and mules 
were dying of cold and starvation. The roads 
were only deep, irregular ruts filled with mud ; 
the camp was a marsh ; the tents stood often in 
pools of water ; the men had sometimes no beds 
but straw dripping with wet, and hardly any 
bed-coverings. Our unfortunate Turkish allies 
were in a far more wretched plight than even we 
ourselves. The authorities who ought to have 
looked after them were impervious to the criti- 
cisms of special correspondents and unassailable 
by Parliamentary votes of censure. A condem- 
nation of the latter kind was hanging over our 
Government. Parliament was called together be- 
fore Christmas ; and after the Christmas recess 
Mr. Roebuck gave notice that he would move for 
a select committee to inquire into the condition 
of the army before Sebastopol, and into the con- 
duct of those departments of the Government 
whose duty it had been to minister to the wants 
of the army. Lord John Russell did not believe 
for himself that the motion could be conscien- 
tiously resisted ; but, as it necessarily involved a 
censure upon some of his colleagues, he did not 
think he ought to remain longer in the Ministry, 
and he therefore resigned his office. The sud- 
den resignation of the leader of the House of 
Commons was a death-blow to any plans of re- 
sistance by which the Government might other- 
wise have thought of encountering Mr. Roe- 
buck's motion. Mr. Roebuck's motion came on, 
and was resisted with vigor by Lord Palmerston 
and Mr. Gladstone. The House of Commons 
was not to be moved by any such argument or 
appeal. The one pervading idea was, that Eng- 
land had been endangered and shamed by the 
break-down of her army organization. When 
the division took place 305 members voted for 
Mr. Roebuck's motion, and only 148 against. 
The majority against ministers was therefore 
148. Every one knows what a scene usually 
takes place when a Ministry is defeated in the 
House of Commons. Cheering again and again 
renewed, counter-cheers of defiance, wild exulta- 
tion, vehement indignation, a whole whirlpool of 
various emotions, seething in that little hall in 
St. Stephen's. But this time there was no such 
outburst. The House could hardly realize the 
fact that the Ministry of All the Talents had 
been thus completely and ignominiously defeat- 
ed. A dead silence followed the announcement 
of the numbers. Then there was a half-breath- 
less murmur of amazement and incredulity. The 
Speaker repeated the numbers, and doubt was 
over. It was still uncertain how the House 
would express its feelings. Suddenly some one 
laughed. The sound gave a direction and a re- 
lief to perplexed, pent-up emotion. Shouts of 
laughter followed. Not merely the pledged op- 
ponents of the Government laughed. Many of 



those who had voted with ministers found them- 
selves laughing too. It seemed so absurd, so 
incongruous, this way of disposing of the great 
Coalition Government. Many must have thought 
of the night of fierce debate, little more than 
two years before, when Mr. Disraeli, then on the 
verge of his fall from power, and realizing fully 
the strength of the combination against him, 
consoled his party and himself for the imminent 
fatality awaiting them by the defiant words, " I 
know that I have to face a Coalition ; the com- 
bination may be successful. A combination lias 
before this been successful ; but coalitions, though 
they may be successful, have always found that 
their triumphs have been brief. This I know, 
that England does not love coalitions." Only 
two years had passed, and the great Coalition 
had fallen, overwhelmed with reproach and pop- 
ular indignation, and amid sudden shouts of 
laughter. 

Lord Derby was invited by the Queen to form 
a Government. He tried, and failed. Palmer- 
ston did not see his way to join a Derby Admin- 
istration, and without him Lord Derby could not 
go on. The Queen then sent for Lord John 
Russell ; but Russell found that he could not get 
a Government together. Lord Palmerston was 
then, to use his own phrase, the inevitable. There 
was not much change in the Ministry. Lord 
Aberdeen was gone, and Lord Palmerston took 
his place ; and Lord Panmnre, who had formerly 
as Fox Maule administered the affairs of the 
army, succeeded the Duke of Newcastle. Lord 
Panmure, however, combined in his own person 
the functions, up to that time absurdly separated, 
of Secretary-at-war and Secretary-for-war. It 
was hoped that by this change great benefit 
would come to our whole army system. Lord 
Palmerston acted energetically, too, in sending 
out a sanitary commission to the Crimea, and a 
commission to superintend the commissariat, a 
department that, almost more than any other, 
had broken down. Lord Palmerston was strong- 
ly pressed by some of the more strenuous Re- 
formers of the House. Mr. Layard, who had ac- 
quired some celebrity before in a very different 
field — as a discoverer, that is to say, in the ruins 
of Nineveh and Babylon — was energetic and in- 
cessant in his attacks on the administration of 
the war, and was not disposed even now to give 
the new Government a moment's rest. Mr. Lay- 
ard was a man of a certain rough ability, immense 
self-sufficiency, and indomitable egotism. He 
was not in any sense an eloquent speaker ; he 
was singularly wanting in all the graces of style 
and manner. But he was fluent, he was vocifer- 
ous, he never seemed to have a moment's doubt 
on any conceivable question, he never admitted 
that there could by any possibility be two sides 
to any matter of discussion. He did really know 
a great deal about the East at a time when the 
habit of travelling in the East was comparatively 
rare. He stamped down all doubt or difference 
of view with the overbearing dogmatism of the 
proverbial man who has been there and ought to 
know; and he was in many respects admirably 
fitted to be the spokesman of all those, and they 
were not a few, who saw that things had been 
going wrong without exactly seeing why, and 
were eager that something should be done, al- 
though they did not clearly know what. Lord 
Palmerston strove to induce the House not to 
press for the appointment of the committee 
recommended in Mr. Roebuck's motion. The 
Government, he said, would make the needful 
inquiries themselves. Mr. Roebuck, however, 
would not give way, and Lord Palmerston yielded 
to a demand which had undoubtedly the support 
of a vast force of public opinion, but his unavoid- 
able concession brought on a new ministerial 
crisis. Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and 
Mr. Sidney Herbert declined to hold office any 
longer. They had opposed the motion for an 
inquiry most gravely and strenuously, and they 
would not lend any countenance to it by remain- 
ing in office. Sir Charles Wood succeeded Sir 
James Graham as First Lord of the Admiralty ; 
Lord John Russell took the place of Secretary of 
the Colonies, vacated by Sidney Herbert ; and 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis followed Mr. Glad- 
stone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 



Meanwhile new negotiations for peace, set on 
foot under the influence of Austria, had been be- 
gun at Vienna, and Lord John Russell had been 
sent there to represent the interests of England. 
We had got a new ally in the little kingdom of 
Sardinia, whose Government was then under the 
control of one of the master-spirits of modern 
politics, Count Cavour. Sardinia went into war 
in order that she might have a locus stumli in the 
councils of Europe from which to set forth her 
grievances against Austria. The policy was sin- 
gularly successful, and entirely justified the ex- 
pectations of Cavour. The Crimean War laid 
the foundations of the kingdom of Italy. But 
there was another event of a very different nat- 
ure, the effect of which seemed at first likely to 
be all in favor of peace. On March 'J, 1855, ihe 
Emperor Nicholas of Russia died of pulmonary 
apoplexy, after an attack of influenza. A car- 
toon appeared in Punch which was called "Gen- 
eral Fe'vrier turned Traitor." The Emperor 
Nicholas had boasted that Russia had two gen- 
erals on whom she could always rely, General 
Janvier and General Fevrier ; and now the Eng- 
lish artist represented General February, a skele- 
ton in Russian uniform, turning traitor and lay- 
ing his bony, ice-cold hand on the heart of the 
sovereign and betraying him to the tomb. But 
indeed it was-not General February alone who 
doomed Nicholas to death. The Czar died of 
broken hopes; of the recklessness that comes 
from defeat and despair. He took no precau- 
tions against cold and exposure ; he treated with 
a magnanimous disdain the remonstrances of 
his physicians and his friends. The news of the 
sudden death of the Emperor created a profound 
sensation in England. At first there was, as we 
have said, a common impression that Nicholas's 
son and successor, Alexander II., would be more 
anxious to make peace than his father had been. 
But this hope was soon gone. The new Czar 
could not venture to show himself to his people 
in a less patriotic light than his predecessor. 
The prospects of the allies were at the time re- 
markably gloomy. There must have seemed to 
the new Russian Emperor considerable ground 
for the hope that disease, and cold, and bad man- 
agement would do more harm to the army of 
England at least than any Russian general could 
do. The Conference at Vienna proved a failure. 
Lord John Russell, sent to Vienna as our repre- 
sentative, was charged by Mr. Disraeli with hav- 
ing encouraged the Russian pretensions. Sir E. 
B. Lytton gave notice of a direct vote of censure 
on "the minister charged with the negotiations 
at Vienna." But Russell anticipated the certain 
effect of a vote in the House of Commons by 
resigning his office. The vote of censure was 
withdrawn. Sir William Molesworth, one of the 
most distinguished of the school who were since 
called Philosophical Radicals, succeeded him as 
Colonial Secretary ; and the Ministry carried one 
or two triumphant votes against Mr. Disraeli, 
Mr. Roebuck, and other opponents, or at least 
unfriendly critics. Meanwhile the Emperor of 
the French and his wife had paid a visit to 
London, and had been received with considera- 
ble enthusiasm. The Queen seems to have been 
very favorably impressed by the Emperor. The 
Prince Consort seems to have been less impress- 
ed. The Prince Consort appears to have judged 
the Emperor almost exactly as impartial opinion 
has judged him everywhere in Europe since that 
time. 

The operations in the Crimea were renewed 
with some vigor. The English army lost much 
by the death of its brave and manly Commander- 
in-chief, Lord Raglan. He was succeeded by 
General Simpson, whose administration during 
the short time that he held the command was at 
least well qualified to keep Lord Raglan's mem- 
ory green and to prevent the regret for his death 
from losing any of its keenness. The French 
army had lost its first commander long before — 
the versatile, reckless, brilliant soldier of fortune, 
St. Arnaud. After St. Arnaud's death the com- 
mand was transferred for a while to General 
Canrobert, who resigned it in favor of General 
Pelissier. The Sardinian contingent had ar- 
rived, and had given admirable proof of its cour- 
age and discipline. On August 10, 1855, the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



35 



Russians, under General Liprandi, made an un- 
successful effort to raise the siege of Sebastopol 
by an attack on the allied forces. The Sardin- 
ian contingent bore themselves with stubborn 
bravery in the resistance, and all Northern Italy 
was thrown into wild delight by the news that 
the flag of Piedmont had been carried to victory 
over the troops of one great European Power, 
and side by side with those of two others. It 
was the first great illustration of Cavour's habit- 
ual policy of blended audacity and cool, far-see- 
ing judgment. The siege had been progressing 
for some time with considerable activity. The 
Malakotf tower and the Mamelon battery in front 
of it became the scenes and the objects of constant 
struggle. The Russians made desperate night 
sorties again and again, and were always repulsed. 
On June 7 the English assaulted the quarries in 
front of the Redan, and the French attacked the 
Mamelon. The attack on both sides was suc- 
cessful; but it was followed on the 18th of the 
same month by a desperate and wholly unsuc- 
cessful attack on the Redan and Malakoff bat- 
teries. On September "> the allies made an at- 
tack almost simultaneously upon the Malakotf 
and the Sedan. The French soon got possession 
of the Malakotf, and the English then at once 
advanced upon the Redan ; but the French were 
near the Malakoff; the English were very far 
away from the Redan. The distance our sol- 
diers had to traverse left them almost helplessly 
exposed to the Russian Hie. They stormed the 
parapets of the Redan despite all the difficulties 
of their attack ; but they were not able to hold 
the place. The attacking party were far too 
small in numbers; reinforcements did not come 
in time ; the English held their own fqr an hour 
against odds that might have seemed overwhelm- 
ing; but it was simply impossible for them to 
establish themselves in the Redan, and the rem- 
nant of them that could withdraw had to retreat 
to the trenches. It was only the old story of the 
war — superb courage and skill of the officers 
and men : outrageously bad generalship. The 
attack might have been renewed that day, but 
the English Commander-in-chief, General Simp- 
son, resolved not to make another attempt till 
the next morning. Before the morrow came 
there was nothing to attack. The Russians 
withdrew during the night from the south side 
of Sebastopol. A bridge of boats had been con- 
structed across the bay to connect the north and 
the south sides of the city, and across this bridge 
Prince Gortschakoff quietly withdrew his troops. 
The Russian general felt that it would be impos- 
sible for him to hold the city much longer, and 
that to remain there was only useless waste of 
life. But, as he said in his own despatch, "It 
is not Sebastopol which we have left to them, but 
the burning ruins of the town, which we our- 
selves set tire to, having maintained the honor 
of the defence in such a manner that our great- 
grandchildren may recall with pride the remem- 
brance of it and send it on to all posterity." It 
was some time before the allies could venture 
to enter the abandoned city. The arsenals and 
powder-magazines were exploding, the flames 
were bursting out of every public building and 
every private house. The Russians had made 
of Sebastopol another Moscow. 

With the close of that long siege, which had 
lasted nearly a year, the war may be said to 
have ended. The brilliant episode of Kars, its 
splendid defence and its final surrender, was 
brought to its conclusion, indeed, after the fall 
of Sebastopol ; but although it naturally attract- 
ed peculiar attention in this country, it could 
have no effect on the actual fortunes of such 
a war. Kars was defended by Colonel Fen- 
wick Williams, an English officer, who held the 
place against overwhelming Russian forces, and 
against an enemy far more appalling — star- 
vation itself. He had to surrender at last to 
famine ; but the very articles of surrender to 
which the conqueror consented became the tro- 
phy of Williams and his men. The garrison 
were allowed to leave the place with all the hon- 
ors of war; and, "as a testimony to the valor- 
ous resistance made by the garrison of Kars, the 
officers of all ranks are to keep their swords." 
The war was virtually over. Austria had been 



exerting herself throughout its progress in the 
interests of peace, and after the fall of Sebas- 
topol she made a new effort with greater success. 
France and Russia were indeed now anxious to 
be out of the struggle almost on any terms. If 
England had held out, it is highly probable that 
she would have had to do so alone. For this, 
indeed, Lord Palmerston was fully prepared as a 
last resource, sooner than submit to terms which 
he considered unsatisfactory. The Congress of 
Paris opened on February 2D, 1856, and on 
March lit) the treaty of peace was signed by the 
plenipotentiaries of the Great Powers. Prussia 
had been admitted to the Congress, which there- 
fore represented England, France, Russia, Aus- 
tria, Prussia, Turkey, and Sardinia. 

By the treaty Kars was restored to the Sul- 
tan, and Sebastopol and all other places taken 
by the allies were given back to Russia. The 
Great Powers engaged to respect the indepen- 
dence and territorial integrity of Turkey. The 
Sultan issued a firman for ameliorating the con- 
dition of his Christian subjects, and no right of 
interference, it was distinctly specified, was giv- 
en to the other Powers by this concession on 
the Sultan's part. The Black Sea was neutral- 
ized ; its waters and its ports were thrown open 
to the mercantile marine of every nation, and 
formally and in perpetuity interdicted to the 
flag of war either of the Powers possessing its 
coasts or of any other Power, with the exception 
of the right of each of the Powers to have the 
same number of small armed vessels in the Black 
Sea to act as a sort of maritime police and to 
protect the coasts. The Sultan and the Emperor 
engaged to establish and maintain no military 
or maritime arsenals in that sea. The naviga- 
tion of the Danube was thrown open. Moldavia 
and Wallachia, continuing under the suzerainty 
of the Sultan, were to enjoy all the privileges 
and immunities they already possessed under 
the guarantee of the contracting Powers, but 
with no separate right of intervention in their 
affairs. Out of Moldavia and Wallachia united, 
after various internal changes, there subsequent- 
ly grew the kingdom of Roumania. The exist- 
ing position of Servia was secured by the treaty. 
During time of peace the Sultan engaged to ad- 
mit no foreign ships of war into the Bosphorus 
or the Dardanelles. 

To guarantee Turkey from the enemy they 
most feared a tripartite treaty was afterwards 
agreed to between England, France, and Austria. 
This document bears date in Paris, April 16, 
1S5G ; by it the contracting parties guaranteed 
jointly and severally the independence and in- 
tegrity of the Ottoman empire, and declared 
that any infraction of the general treaty of 
March 30 would be considered by them as ca- 
sus belli. The Congress of Paris was remarka- 
ble for the fact that the plenipotentiaries before 
separating came to an agreement on the rules 
generally of maritime war by which privateering 
was abolished. It was agreed, however, that 
the rules adopted at the Congress of Paris 
should only be binding on those States that had 
acceded or should accede to them. The United 
States raised some difficulty about renouncing 
the right of privateering, and the declarations 
of the Congress were therefore made without 
America's consenting to them. At the instiga- 
tion of Count Cavour the condition of Italy was 
brought before the Congress; and there can be 
no doubt that out of the Congress and the part 
that Sardinia assumed as representative of Ital- 
ian nationality came the succession of events 
which ended in the establishment of a King of 
Italy in the Palace of the Quirinal. The ad- 
justment of the condition of the Danubian prin- 
cipalities, too, engaged much attention and dis. 
cussion, and a highly ingenious arrangement 
was devised for the purpose of keeping those 
provinces from actual union, so that they might 
be coherent enough to act as a rampart against 
Russia, without being so coherent as to cause 
Austria any alarm for her own somewhat dis- 
jointed, not to say distracted, political system. 
All these artificial and complex arrangements 
presently fell to pieces, and the principalities be- 
came in course of no very long time an united 
independent State under a hereditary Prince. 



But for the hour it was hoped that the inde- 
pendence of Turkey and the restriction of Rus- 
sia, the security of the Christian provinces, the 
neutrality of the Black Sea. and the closing of 
the Straits against war vessels, had been bought 
by the war. 

England lost some twenty-four thousand men 
in the war, of whom hardly a sixth fell in battle 
or died of wounds. Cholera and other disea-cs 
gave grim account of the rest. Forty-one mill- 
ions of money were added by the campaign to 
the National Debt. England became involved 
in a quarrel with the United States because of 
our Foreign Enlistment Act. At the close of 
December, 1854, Parliament hurriedly passed an 
Act authorizing the formation of a Foreign Le- 
gion for service in the war, and some Swiss and 
Germans were recruited who never proved of 
the slightest service. Prussia and America both 
complained that the zeal of our recruiting func- 
tionaries outran the limits of discretion and of 
law. One of our consuls was actually put on 
trial at Cologne ; and America made a serious 
complaint of the enlistment of her citizens. Eng- 
land apologized ; but the United States were out 
of temper, and insisted on sending our minis- 
ter, Mr. Crampton, away from Washington, and 
some little time passed before the friendly rela- 
tions of the two States were completely restored. 

There was a feeling of disappointment in this 
country at the close of the war. Our soldiers 
had done splendidly; but our generals and our 
system had done poorly indeed. Only one first- 
class reputation of a military order had come out 
' of the war, and that was by the common consent 
of the world awarded to a Russian — to General 
Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol. No new 
name was made on our side or on that of the 
French ; and some promising or traditional rep- 
utations were shattered. The political results 
of the war were to many minds equally unsatis- 
fying. Lord Aberdeen estimated that it might 
perhaps secure peace in the East of Europe for 
some twenty-five years. His modest expecta- 
tion was prophetic; indeed, it a little overshot 
the mark. Twenty-one years after the close of 
the Crimean campaign Russia and Turkey were 
at war again. 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE LOItCHA " ARROW." — TRANSPORTATION. 

After the supposed settlement of the Eastern 
Question at the Congress of Paris a sort of lan- 
gour seems to have come over Parliament and 
the public mind in England. Lord John Russell 
proposed a series of resolutions to establish in 
England a genuine system of national education, 
which were of course rejected by the House of 
Commons. Public opinion, both in and out of 
Parliament, was not nearly ripe for such a prin- 
ciple then. One of the regular attempts to ad- 
mit the Jews to Parliament was made, and suc- 
ceeded in the House of Commons, to fail, as usu- 
al, in the House of Lords. The House of Lords 
itself was thrown into great perturbation for a 
time by the proposal of the Government to con- 
fer a peerage for life on one of the judges, Sir 
James Parke. Lord Lyndhurst strongly opposed 
the proposal, on the ground that it was the be- 
ginning of an attempt to introduce a system of 
life-peerages, which would destroy the ancient 
and hereditary character of the House of Lords. 
The Government, who had really no reactionary 
or revolutionary designs in their mind, settled 
the matter for the time by creating Sir James 
Parke Baron Wensleydale in the usual way, and 
the object they had in view was quietly accom- 
plished many years later, when the appellate 
jurisdiction of the Lords was remodelled. 
! Sir George Lewis was Chancellor of the Ex- 
'• chequer. He was as yet not credited with any- 
| thing like the political ability which he after- 
wards proved that he possessed. It was the 
fashion to regard him as a mere bookman, who 
had drifted somehow into Parliament, and who, 
in the temporary absence of available talent, had 
been thrust into the office lately held by .Mr. 
1 Gladstone. The contrast, indeed, between the 
j style of his speaking and that of Mr. Gladstone 
I or Mr. Disraeli was enough to dishearten any 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



political assembly. Sir George Lewis began by 
being nearly inaudible, and continued to the last 
to be oppressed by the most ineffective and un- 
attractive manner and delivery. But it began 
to be gradually found out that the monotonous, 
halting, feeble manner covered a very remarkable 
power of expression ; that the speaker had great 
resources of argument, humor, and illustration ; 
that every sentence contained some fresh idea 
or some happy expression. After a while, the 
capacity of Lewis ran the risk of being overrated 
quite as much as it had been undervalued before. 

For the present, however, Sir George Lewis 
was regarded only as the sort of statesman whom 
it was fitting to have in office just then — the 
statesman of an interval, in whom no one was 
expected to take any particular interest. The 
attention of the public was a good deal distracted 
from political affairs by the failure and frauds of 
the Royal British Bank and other frauds, which 
gave, for the time, a sort of idea that the finan- 
cial principles of the country were crumbling to 
pieces. The culmination of the extraordinary 
career of John Sadleir was fresh in public mem- 
ory. This man was the organizer and guiding 
spirit of the Irish Brigade, a gang of adventurers 
who got into Parliament, and traded on the 
genuine grievances of their country to get power 
and money for themselves. John Sadleir em- 
bezzled, swindled, forged, and finally escaped 
justice by committing suicide on Hampstead 
Heath. The brother of Sadleir was expelled 
from the House of Commons; one of his accom- 
plices, who had obtained a Government appoint- 
ment and had embezzled money, contrived to 
make his escape to the United States ; and the 
Irish Brigade was broken up. It is only just to 
say that the best representatives of the Irish 
Catholics and. the Irish national party, in and 
out of Parliament, had never, from the first, 
believed in Sadleir and his band, and had made 
persistent efforts to expose them. 

About this same time Mr. Cyrus W. Field, an 
energetic American merchant, came over to this 
country to explain to its leading merchants and 
scientific men a plan he had for constructing an 
electric telegraph line underneath the Atlantic. 
He was listened to with polite curiosity. Mr. 
Field had, however, a much better reception, on 
the whole, than M. de Lesseps, who came to 
England a few months later to explain his project 
for constructing a ship canal across the Isthmus 
of Suez. His proposal was received with cold- 
ness, and more than coldness, by engineers, 
capitalists, and politicians. 

The political world seemed to have made up 
its mind for a season of quiet. Suddenly a 
storm broke out. The Speech from the Throne 
at the opening of Parliament, on February 3, 
1857, stated that acts of violence, insults to the 
British flag, and infraction of treaty rights, 
committed by the local Chinese authorities at 
Canton, and a pertinacious refusal of redress, 
had rendered it necessary for her Majesty's of- 
ficers in China to have recourse to measures of 
force to obtain satisfaction. The alleged offences 
of the Chinese authorities at Canton had for 
their single victim the lorcha Arrow. The 
lorcha Arrow was a small boat built on the 
European model. The word "Lorcha" is taken 
from the Portuguese settlement at Macao, at the 
mouth of the Canton river. It often occurs in 
treaties with the Chinese authorities. On Octo- 
ber 8, 1856, a party of Chinese in charge of an 
officer boarded the Arrow, in the Canton river. 
They took off twelve men on a charge of piracy, 
leaving two men in charge of the lorcha. The 
Arrow was declared by its owners to be a 
British vessel. Our Consul at Canton, Mr. 
Parkes, demanded from Yeh, the Chinese Gov- 
ernor of Canton, the return of the men, basing 
his demand upon the Treaty of 1843, supple- 
mental to the Treaty of 1S42. This treaty did 
not give the Chinese authorities any right to 
seize Chinese offenders, or supposed offenders, 
on board an English vessel. It merely gave 
them a right to require the surrender of the 
offenders at the hands of the English. The 
Chinese Governor, Yeh, contended, however, 
that the lorcha was a Chinese pirate vessel, 
which had no right whatever to hoist the flag of 



England. It may be plainly stated at once that 
the Arrow was not an English vessel, but only 
a Chinese vessel which had obtained by false 
pretences the temporary possession of a British 
flag. Mr. Consul Parkes, however, was fussy, 
and he demanded the instant restoration of the 
captured men, and lie sent off to our Plenipo- 
tentiary at Hong Kong, Sir John Bowring, for 
authority and assistance in the business. 

Sir John Bowring was a man of considerable 
ability. At one time he seemed to be a candi- 
date for something like fame. He had a very 
large and varied knowledge of European and 
Asiatic languages, he had travelled a great deal, 
and had sat in Parliament for some years. He 
understood political economy, and had a good 
knowledge of trade and commerce. He had 
many friends and admirers, and he set up early 
for a sort of great man. He was full of self- 
conceit, and without any very clear idea of po- 
litical principles on the large scale. Bowring 
had been Consul for some years at Canton, and 
he had held the post of chief superintendent of 
trade there. It would seem as if his eager self- 
conceit would not allow him to resist the tempta- 
tion to display himself on the field of political 
action as a great English plenipotentiary bid-' 
ding England be of good cheer, and compelling 
inferior races to grovel in the dust before her. 
He ordered the Chinese authorities to surrender 
all the men taken from the Arrow, and he in- 
sisted that an apology should be offered for their 
arrest, and a formal pledge given hy the Chinese 
authorities that no such act should ever be com- 
mitted again. If this were not done within 
forty-eight hours, naval operations were to be 
begun against the Chinese. The Chinese Gov- 
ernor, Yeh, sent back all the men, and under- 
took to promise that for the future great care 
should be taken that no British ship should be 
visited improperly by Chinese officers. But he 
could not offer an apology for the particular case 
of the Arrow, for he still maintained, as was 
indeed the fact, that the Arrow was a Chinese 
vessel, and that the English had nothing to do 
with her. Accordingly, Sir John Bowring car- 
ried out his threat, and had Canton bombarded 
by the fleet which Admiral Sir Michael Seymour 
commanded. From October 23 to November 
13 naval and military operations were kept up 
continuously. Commissioner Yeh retaliated by 
foolishly offering a reward for the head of every 
Englishman. 

This news from China created a considerable 
sensation in England. On February 24, 1857, 
Lord Derby brought forward in the House of 
Lords a motion, comprehensively condemning 
the whole of the proceedings of the British 
authorities in China. The debate would have 
been memorable if only for the powerful speech 
in which the venerable Lord Lyndhurst sup- 
ported the motion, and exposed the utter illegal- 
ity of the course pursued by Sir John Bowring. 
The House of Lords rejected the motion of Lord 
Derby by a majority of 146 to 110. On Febru- 
ary 26 Mr. Cobden brought forward a similar 
motion in the House of Commons. This must 
have been a peculiarly painful task for Mr. Cob- 
den. He was an old friend of Sir John Bowring, 
with whom he had always supposed himself to 
have many or most opinions in common. But 
he followed his convictions as to public duty in 
despite of his personal friendship. The debate 
wqs remarkable more for the singular political 
combination which it developed as it went on, 
than even for its varied ability and eloquence. 
Men spoke and voted on the same side who had 
probably never been brought into such com- 
panionship before, and never were afterwards. 
Mr. Cobden found himself supported by Mr. 
Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, by Mr. Roebuck and 
Sir E. B. Lytton, by Lord John Russell and Mr. 
Whiteside, by Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards the 
Marquis of Salisbury, Sir Frederick Thesiger, 
Mr. Roundell Palmer, afterwards Lord Selborne, 
Mr. Sidney Herbert, and Mr. Milner Gibson. 
Mr. Cobden had probably never dreamed of the 
amount or the nature of the support his motion 
was destined to receive. The vote of censure 
was carried by 263 votes against 247 — a ma- 
I jority of 16. 



Lord Palmerston announced two or three 
days after that the Government had resolved on 
a dissolution and an appeal to the country. 
Lord Palmerston understood his countrymen. 
He knew that a popular Minister makes himself 
more popular by appealing to the country on the 
ground that he has been condemned by the 
House of Commons for upholding the honor of 
England and coercing some foreign power some- 
where. In his address to the electors of Tiver- 
ton he declared that an insolent barbarian, wield- 
ing authority at Canton, violated the British flag, 
broke the engagements of treaties, offered re- 
wards fir the heads of British subjects in that 
part of China, and planned their destruction by 
murder, assassination, and poison. That, of 
course, was all-sufficient. The "insolent bar- 
barian " was in itself almost enough. Governor 
Yeh certainly was not a barbarian. His argu- 
ment on the subject of International Law ob- 
tained the endorsement of Lord Lyndhurst. His 
way of arguing the political and commercial 
case compelled the admiration of Lord Derby. 
His letters form a curious contrast to the docu- 
ments contributed to the controversy by the 
representatives of British authority in China. 
However, he became for electioneering purposes 
an insolent barbarian ; and the story of a Chinese 
baker who was said to have tried to poison Sir 
John Bowring was transfigured into an attempt 
at the wholesale poisoning of Englishmen in 
China by the express orders of the Chinese Gov- 
ernor. Lord Palmerston 's victory was complete. 
Cobden, Bright, Milner Gibson, W. J. Fox, Lay- 
ard, and many other leading opponents of the 
Chinese policy, were left without seats. Lord 
Palmerston came back to power with renewed 
and redoubled strength. A little war with Per- 
sia came to an end in time to give him another 
claim as a conqueror on the sympathies of the 
constituencies. In the Royal Speech at the 
opening of Parliament it was announced that the 
differences between this country and China still 
remained unadjusted, and that therefore her 
Majesty had sent to China a Plenipotentiary who 
would be supported by an adequate naval and 
military force if necessary. The Government, 
however, had more serious business with which 
to occupy themselves before they were at liberty 
to turn to the easy work of coercing the Chinese. 

The new Parliament was engaged for some 
time in passing the Act abolishing the ancient 
jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts respect- 
ing divorce, and setting up a regular court of 
law, the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Court, 
to deal with questions between husband and 
wife. The passing of the Divorce Act was 
strongly contested in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment, and indeed was secured at last only by 
Lord Palmerston's intimating very significantly 
that he would keep the Houses sitting until the 
measure had been disposed of. Mr. Gladstone, 
in particular, offered to the bill a most strenuous 
opposition. 

The year 1857 saw the abolition of the system 
of transportation. Transportation as a means 
of getting rid of part of our criminal population 
dates from the time of Charles II., when the 
judges gave power for the removal of offenders 
to the North American colonies. It was first 
regularly introduced into our criminal law in 
1717, by an Act of Parliament. In 1787 a car- 
go of criminals was shipped out to Botany Bay, 
on the eastern shore of New South Wales, and 
near Sydney, the present thriving capital of the 
colony. Afterwards the convicts were also sent 
to Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania ; and to 
Norfolk Island, a lonely island in the Pacific, 
some eight hundred miles from the New South 
AVales shore. Norfolk Island became the penal 
settlement for the convicted among convicts ; 
that is to say, criminals who, after transporta- 
tion to New South Wales, committed new crimes 
there, might be sent by the Colonial authorities 
for sterner punishment to Norfolk Island. It 
looked as if the system ought to be satisfactory 
in every way and to everybody. The convicts 
were provided with a new career, a new country, 
and a chance of reformation. They were usual- 
ly after a while released from actual durance in 
| the penal settlement, and allowed conditionally 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



to find employment, and to make themselves, if 
they could, good citizens. Their labor, it was 
thought, would be of great service to the col- 
onists. But the colonists very soon began to 
complain. The convicts who had spent their 
period of probation in hulks or prisons gener- 
ally left those homes of horror with nature so 
brutalized as to make their intrusion into any 
community of decent persons an insufferable 
nuisance. Pent up in penal settlements by 
themselves, the convicts turned into demons; 
drafted into an inhabited colony, they were too 
numerous to be wholly absorbed by the popula- 
tion, and they carried their contagion along with 
them. New South Wales and Tasmania began 
to protest against being made the refuse-ground 
for our seoundrelism. Only in Western Austra- 
lia were the people willing to receive them on 
any conditions, and Western Australia had but 
scanty natural resources and could in any case 
harbor very few of our outcasts. The discovery 
of gold in Australia settled the question of those 
colonies being troubled any more with our 
transportation system ; for the greatest enthusiast. 
for transportation would hardly propose to send 
out gangs of criminals to a region glowing with 
the temptations of gold. 

The question then arose what was England to 
do with the criminals whom up to that time she 
had been able to shovel out of her way ? All 
the receptacles were closed but Western Austra- 
lia, and that counted for almost nothing. In 
1853 a bill was brought in by the Ministry to 
substitute penal servitude for transportation, 
unless in cases where the sentence was for four- 
teen years and upwards. The bill reduced the 
scale of punishment; that is to say, made a 
shorter period of penal servitude supply the 
place of a longer term of transportation. Lord 
Palmerston was Home Secretary at this time. 
It was during the passing of the bill through the 
House of Lords that Lord Grey suggested the 
introduction of a modification of the ticket-of- 
leave system which was in practice in the colo- 
nies. The principle of the ticket-of-leave was 
that the convict should not be kept in custody 
during the whole period of his sentence, but that 
he should be allowed to pass through a period 
of conditional liberty before he obtained his fidl 
and unrestricted freedom. Now, there can be 
no doubt that the principle of the ticket-of-leave 
is excellent. But it proved on its first trial in 
this country the most utter delusion. It got no 
fair chance at all. It was understood by the 
whole English public that the object of the tick- 
et-of-leave was to enable the authorities to give 
a conditional discharge from custody to a man 
who had in some way proved his fitness for such 
a relaxation of punishment, and that the eye of 
the police would be on him even during the peri- 
od of his conditional release. This was in fact 
the construction put on the Act in Ireland, 
where accordingly the ticket-of-leave system was 
worked with the most complete success under 
the management of Sir Walter Crofton, chair- 
man of the Board of Prison Directors. A man 
who had Sir Walter Crofton's ticket-of-leave was 
known by that very fact to have given earnest 
of good purpose and steady character. The 
system in Ireland was therefore all that its au- 
thors could have wished it to be. But for some 
inscrutable reason the Act was interpreted in 
this country as simply giving every convict a 
right, after a certain period of detention, to claim 
a ticket-of-leave, provided he had not grossly 
violated any of the regulations of the prison 
or misconducted himself in some outrageous 
manner. 

It would be superfluous to examine the work- 
ing of such a system. A number of scoundrels 
whom the judges had sentenced to be kept in 
durance for so many years were without any con- 
ceivable reason turned loose upon society long 
before the expiration of their sentence. They 
were in England literally turned loose upon so- 
ciety, for it was held by the authorities here that 
it might possibly interfere with the chance of a 
jail-bird's getting employment, if he were seen 
to be watched by the police. The police there- 
fore were considerately ordered to refrain from 
looking after them. Fifty per cent, of the ruf- 



fians released on ticket-of-leave were afterwards 
brought up for new crimes, and convicted over 
again. Of those who, although not actually con- 
victed, were believed to have relapsed into their 
old habits, from sixty to seventy per cent, re- 
lapsed within the first year of their liberation. 
Baron Bramwell stated from the bench that be 
had had instances of criminals coming before him 
who had three sentences overlapping each other. 
The convict was set free on ticket-of-leave, con- 
victed of some new crime, and re-committed to 
prison ; released again on ticket-of-leave, and 
convicted once again, before the period of his 
original sentence had expired. An alarm sprang 
up in England. The result of the public alarm 
and the Parliamentary reconsideration of the 
whole subject was the bill brought in by Sir 
George Grey in 1857. This measure extended 
the provisions of the Act of 1853 by substituting 
in all cases a sentence of penal servitude for one 
of transportation, abolished the old-fashioned 
transportation system altogether, but it left the 
power to the authorities to have penal servitude 
carried out in any of the colonies where it might 
be thought expedient. The Government had 
still some idea of utilizing Western Australia for 
some of our offenders. But nothing came of this 
plan, or of the clause in the new Act which was 
passed to favor it; and as a matter of fact trans- 
portation was abolished. How the amended leg- 
islation worked in other respects we shall have 
an opportunity of examining hereafter. 

The Gretna Green marriages became illegal 
in 1857, their doom having been fixed for that 
time by an Act passed in the previous session. 
Thenceforward such marriages were unlawful, 
unless one of the parties had lived at least twen- 
ty-one days previously in Scotland. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

THE INDIAN MUTINY. 

In May, 1857, the great Indian Mutiny shook 
to its foundations the whole fabric of British rule 
in Hindostan. Throughout the greater part of 
the north and north-west of the great Indian 
peninsula there was a rebellion of the native 
races against English power. It was not by any 
means a merely military mutiny. It was a com- 
bination of military grievance, national hatred, 
and religious fanaticism against the English oc- 
cupiers of India. The native princes and the 
native soldiers were in it. The Mohammedan 
and the Hindoo forgot their own religious anti- 
pathies to join against the Christian. Let us 
first see what were the actual facts of the out- 
break. When the improved (Enfield) rifle was 
introduced into the Indian army in 1856 the 
idea got abroad that the cartridges were made 
up in paper greased with a mixture of cow's fat 
and hog's lard. It appears that the paper was 
actually greased, but not with any such material 
as that which religious alarm suggested to the 
native troops. Now, a mixture of cow's fat and 
hog's lard would have been, above all things, un- 
suitable for use in cartridges to be distributed 
among our Sepoys ; for the Hindoo regards the 
cow with religious veneration, and the Moham- 
medan looks upon the hog with utter loathing. 
In the mind of the former something sacred to 
him was profaned ; in that of the latter some- 
thing unclean and abominable was forced upon 
his daily use. Various efforts were made to al- 
lay the panic among the native troops. The use 
of the cartridges complained of was discontinued 
by orders issued in January, 1857. The Gover- 
nor-general sent out a proclamation in the fol- 
lowing May, assuring the army of Bengal that 
the tales told to them of offence to their religion 
or injury to their caste being meditated by the 
Government of India were all malicious inven- 
tions and falsehoods. Still, the idea was strong 
among the troops that some design against their 
religion was meditated. A mutinous spirit be- 
gan to spread itself abroad. In March some of 
the native regiments had to be disbanded. In 
April some executions of Sepoys took place for 
gross and open mutiny. In the same month sev- 
eral of the native Bengal cavalry in Mecrut re- 
fused to use the cartridges served out to them, 
although they had been authoritatively assured 



that the paper in which the cartridges were wrap- 
ped had never been touched by any offensive 
material. On May 9 these men were sent to the 
jail. They had been tried by court-martial, and 
were sentenced, eighty of them, to imprisonment 
and hard labor for ten years, the remaining five 
to a similar punishment for six years. They 
had chains put on them in the presence of their 
comrades, who no doubt regarded them as mar- 
tyrs to their religious faith, and they were thus 
publicly marched off to the common jail. The 
guard placed over the jail actually consisted of 
Sepoys. 

The following day, Sunday, May 10, was mem- 
orable. The native troops in Meerut broke into 
open mutiny. They fired upon their officers, 
killed a colonel and others, broke into the jail, 
released their comrades, and massacred several 
of the European inhabitants. The European 
troops rallied and drove them from their can- 
tonments or barracks. Then came the momen- 
tous event, the turning-point of the Mutiny: 
the act that marked out its character, and made 
it what it afterwards became. Meerut is an 
important military station between the Ganges 
and the Jumna, thirty-eight miles north-east 
from Delhi. In the vast palace of Delhi, al- 
most a city in itself, lived the aged King of 
Delhi, as he was called — the disestablished, but 
not wholly disendowed, sovereign, the descendant 
of the great Timour, the last representative of 
the Grand Mogul. The mutineers fled along 
the road to Delhi; and some evil fate directed 
that they were not to be pursued or stopped on 
their way. Unchecked, unpursued, they burst 
into Delhi, and swarmed into the precincts of 
the palace of the king. They claimed his pro- 
tection ; they insisted upon his accepting their 
cause and themselves. They proclaimed him 
Emperor of India, and planted the standard 
of rebellion against English rule on the battle- 
ments of his palace. They had found in one 
moment a leader, a flag, and a cause, and the 
mutiny was transfigured into a revolutionary 
war. The Sepoy troops, in the city and the 
cantonments on the Delhi ridge, two miles off, 
and overlooking the city, at once began to cast 
in their lot with the mutineers. The poor old 
puppet whom they set up as their emperor was 
a feeble creature, some eighty years of age. 
He had long been merely a pensioner of the 
East India Company. But he was the repre- 
sentative of the great dynasty whose name and 
effigies had been borne by all the coin of India 
until some twenty years before. He stood for 
legitimacy and divine right; and he supplied all 
the various factions and sects of which the mu- 
tiny was composed, or to be composed, with a 
visible and an acceptable head. If the mutineers 
flying from Meerut had been promptly pursued 
and dispersed, or captured, before they reached 
Delhi, the tale we have, to tell might have been 
shorter and very different. But when they 
reached, unchecked, the Jumna glittering in the 
morning light, when they swarmed across the 
bridge of boats that spanned it, and when at 
length they clamored under the windows of the 
palace that they had come to restore the rule of 
the Delhi dynasty, they had all unconsciously- 
seized one of the great critical moments of his- 
tory, and converted a military mutiny into a 
national and religious war. 

This is the manner in which the Indian Re- 
bellion began and assumed its distinct character. 
Mutinies were not novelties in India. There 
had been some very serious outbreaks before the 
time of the greased cartridges. But there was 
a combination of circumstances at weak to bring 
about this revolt which affected variously but at 
once the army, the princes, and the populations 
of India. Let us speak first of the army. The 
Bengal army was very different in its constitu- 
tion and conditions from that of Bombay or 
Madras, the other great divisions of Indian 
Government at that time. In the Bengal army 
the Hindoo Sepoys were far more numerous 
than the Mohammedans, and were chiefly Brah- 
mins of high caste; while in Madras and Horn- 
bay the army was made up, as the Bengal regi- 
ments are now, of men of all sects and races 
without discrimination. Until the very year 



38 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



before the Mutiny the Bengal soldier was only 
enlisted for service in India, and was exempted 
from any liability to be sent across the seas — 
across the " black water" which the Sepoy dread- 
ed and hated to have to cross. No such exemption 
was allowed to the soldiers of Bombay or Mad- 
ras; and in July, 1856, an order was issued by 
the military authorities to the effect that future 
enlistments in Bengal should be for service any- 
where without limitation. Thus the Bengal Se- 
poy had not only been put in the position of a 
privileged and pampered favorite, but he had 
been subjected to the indignity and disappoint- 
ment of seeing his privileges taken away from 
him. 

But we must above all other things take into 
account, when considering the position of the 
Hindoo Sepoy, the influence of the tremendous 
institution of caste. An Englishman or Europe- 
an of any country will have to call his imagina- 
tive faculties somewhat vigorously to his aid in 
order to get even an idea of the power of this 
monstrous superstition. The man who by the 
merest accident, by the slightest contact with 
anything that defiled, had lost caste, was excom- 
municated from among the living, and was held 
to be for evermore accurst of God. His dear- 
est friend, his nearest relation shrank back from 
him in alarm and abhorrence. Now. it had be- 
come from various causes a strong suspicion in 
the mind of the Sepoy that there was a deliber- 
ate purpose in the minds of the English rulers 
of the country to defile the Hindoos, and to bring 
them all to the dead level of one caste or no 
caste. No doubt there was in many instances 
a lack of consideration shown for the Hindoo's 
peculiar and very perplexing tenets. To many 
a man fresh from the waj'S of England the Hin- 
doo doctrines and practices appeared so ineffably- 
absurd that he could not believe any human be- 
ings were serious in their devotion to them, and 
he took no pains to conceal his opinion as to the 
absurdity of the creed, and the hypocrisy of those 
who professed it. Some of the elder officers and 
civilians were imbued very strongly with a con- 
viction that the work of open proselytism was 
part of their duty ; and in the best faith and with 
the purest intentions they thus strengthened the 
growing suspicion that the mind of the authori- 
ties was set on the defilement of the Hindoos. 
Nor was it among the Hindoos alone that the 
alarm began to be spread abroad. It was the 
conviction of the Mohammedans that their faith 
and their rites were to be tampered with as well. 
It was whispered among them everywhere that 
the peculiar baptismal custom of the Mohammed- 
ans was to be suppressed by law, and Moham- 
medan women were to be compelled to go un- 
veiled in public. The slightest alterations in any 
system gave fresh confirmation to the suspicions 
that were afloat among the Hindoos and Mussul- 
mans. When a change was made in the arrange- 
ments of the prisons, and the native prisoners 
were no longer allowed to cook for themselves, a 
murmur went abroad that this was the first overt 
act in the conspiracy to destroy the caste, and 
with it the bodies and souls, of the Hindoos. 
Another change must be noticed too. At one 
time it was intended that the native troops should 
be commanded for the most part by native offi- 
cers. The men would, therefore, have had some- 
thing like sufficient security that their religious 
scruples were regarded and respected. But by 
degrees the natives were shouldered out of the 
high positions, until at length it became practi- 
cally an army of native rank and file commanded 
by Englishmen. If we remember that a Hindoo 
sergeant of lower caste would, when off parade, 
often abase himself with his forehead in the dust 
before a Sepoy private who belonged to the 
Brahmin order, we shall have some idea of the 
perpetual collision between military discipline 
and religious principle which affected the Hin- 
doo members of an army almost exclusively 
commanded by Europeans and Christians. 

We have spoken of the army and of its relig- 
ious scruples ; we must now speak of the terri- 
torial and political influences which affected the 
princes and the populations of India. Lord 
Dalhousie had not long left India on the ap- 
pointment of Lord Canning to the Governor- 



generalship when the Mutiny broke out. Lord 
Dalhousie was a man of commanding energy, of 
indomitable courage, with the intellect of a ruler 
of men, and the spirit of a conquerer. He was 
undoubtedly a great man. He had had some 
Parliamentary experience in England and in both 
Houses ; and he had been Vice-President and 
subsequently President of the Board of Trade 
under Sir Robert Peel. He had taken great in- 
terest in the framing of regulations for the rail- 
way legislation of the mania season of 1S44 and 
184:5. Towards the close of 1847 Lord Dal- 
housie was sent out to India. Never was there 
in any country an administration of more suc- 
cessful activity than that of Lord Dalhousie. 
He introduced cheap postage into India; he 
made railways ; he set up lines of electric tele- 
graph. He devoted much of his attention to ir- 
rigation, to the making of great roads, to the 
work of the Ganges Canal. He was the founder 
of a comprehensive system of native education. 
He put down infanticide, the Thug system, and 
he carried out with vigor Lord William Ben- 
tinck's Act for the suppression of the Suttee, or 
burning of widows on the funeral pile of their 
husbands. But Lord Dalhousie was not wholly 
engaged in such works as these. During his 
few years of office he annexed the Punjaub ; he 
incorporated part of the Burmese territory in 
our dominions ; he annexed Nagpore, Sattara, 
Jhansi, Berar and Oudh. In the Punjaub the 
annexation was provoked by the murder of some 
of our officers, sanctioned, if not actually ordered, 
by a native prince. Lord Dalhousie marched a 
force into the Punjaub. This land, the " land of 
the five waters,'' lies at the gate-way of Hindostan, 
and was peopled by Mussulmans, Hindoos, and 
Sikhs, the latter a new sect of reformed Hindoos. 
We found arrayed against us not only the Sikhs 
but our old enemies the Afghans. Lord Gough 
was in command of our forces. He fought rash- 
ly and disastrously the famous battle of Chillian- 
wallah : he was defeated. But he wholly recov- 
ered his position by the complete defeat which 
he inflicted upon the enemy at Goojrat. Never 
was a victory more complete in itself or more 
promptly and effectively followed up. The Sikhs 
were crushed ; the Afghans were driven in wild 
rout back across their savage passes ; and Lord 
Dalhousie annexed the Punjaub. He presented 
as one token of his conquest the famous diamond, 
the Koh-i-noor, surrendered in evidence of sub- 
mission by the Maharajah of Lahore, to the 
Crown of England. 

Lord Dalhousie annexed Oudh on the ground 
that the East India Company had bound them- 
selves to defend the sovereigns of Oudh against 
foreign and domestic enemies on condition that 
the State should be governed in such a manner 
as to render the lives and property of its popula- 
tion safe ; and that while the Company performed 
their part of the contract, the King of Oudh so 
governed his dominions as to make his rule a 
curse to his own people, and to all neighboring 
territories. Other excuses or justifications there 
were of course in the case of each other annexa- 
ation ; and we shall yet hear some more of what 
came of the annexation of Sattara and Jhansi. 
If, however, each of these acts of policy were not 
only justifiable but actually inevitable, none the 
less must a succession of such acts produce a pro- 
found emotion among the races in whose midst 
they were accomplished. The populations of In- 
dia became stricken with alarm as they saw their 
native princes thus successively dethroned. The 
subversion of thrones, the annexation of states, 
seemed to them naturally enough to form part of 
that vast scheme for rooting out all the religions 
and systems of India, concerning which so many 
vague forebodings had darkly warned the land. 
Many of our Sepoys came from Oudh and other 
annexed territories, and little reason as they 
might have had for any personal attachment to 
the subverted dynasties, they yet felt that nation- 
al resentment which any manner of foreign in- 
tervention is almost certain to provoke. 

There were peculiar reasons too why, if relig- 
ious and political distrust did prevail, the moment 
of Lord Canning's accession to the supreme au- 
thority in India should seem inviting and favor- 
able for schemes of sedition. The Afghan war 



had told the Sepoy that British troops are not 
absolutely invincible in battle. The impression 
produced almost everywhere in India by the 
Crimean war was a conviction that the strength 
of England was on the wane. The Sepoy saw 
that the English force in Northern India was very 
small; and he really believed that it was small 
because England had no more men to send there. 
In his mind Russia was the great rising and con- 
quering country; England was sinking into de- 
cay; her star waning before the strong glare of 
the portentous northern light. Moreover, Lord 
Canning had hardly assumed office as Governor- 
general of India, when the dispute occurred be- 
tween the British and Chinese authorities at Can- 
ton, and almost at the same moment war was 
declared against Persia by proclamation of the 
Governor-general at Calcutta, in consequence of 
the Shah having marched an army into Herat 
and besieged it, in violation of a treaty with 
Great Britain made in 1853. A body of troops 
was sent from Bombay to the Persian Gulf, and 
shortly after General Outram left Bombay with 
additional troops, as Commander-in-chief of the 
field force in Persia. Therefore, in the opening 
days of 1S57. it was known among the native 
populations of India that the East India Com- 
pany was at war with Persia, and that England 
had on her hands a quarrel witli China. The 
native army of the three Presidencies taken to- 
gether was nearly three hundred thousand, while 
the Europeans were but forty- three thousand, 
of whom some five thousand had just been told 
off for duty in Persia. It must be owned that, 
given the existence of a seditious spirit, it would 
have been hardly possible for it to find conditions 
more seemingly favorable and tempting. There 
can be no doubt that a conspiracy for the sub- 
version of the English government in India was 
afoot during the early days of 1857, and possibly 
for long before. The story of the mysterious 
chupatties is well known. The chupatties are 
small cakes of unleavened bread, and they were 
found to be distributed with amazing rapidity and 
precision of system at one time throughout the 
native villages of the north and north-west. In 
no instance were they distributed among the pop- 
ulations of still-existing native States. They 
were only sent among the villages over which 
English rule extended. A native messenger 
brought two of these mysterious cakes to the 
watchman or headman of a village, and bade him 
to have others prepared like them, and to pass 
them on to another place. There could be no 
doubt that the chupatties conveyed a warning to 
all who received them that something strange 
was about to happen, and bade them to be pre- 
pared for whatever might befall. 

The news of the outbreak at Meerut, and the 
proclamation in Delhi, broke upon Calcutta with 
the shock of a thunder-clap. For one or two 
days Calcutta was a prey to mere panic. The 
alarm was greatly increased by the fact that the 
dethroned King of Oudh was living near to the 
city, at Garden Reach, a few miles down the 
Hooghly. The inhabitants of Calcutta, when the 
news of the Mutiny came, were convinced that 
the palace of the King of Oudh was the head- 
quarters of rebellion, and were expecting the 
moment when, from the residence at Garden 
Reach, an organized army of murderers was to 
be sent forth to capture and destroy the ill-fated 
city, and to make its streets run with the blood 
of its massacred inhabitants. Lord Canning took 
the prudent course of having the king with his 
prime minister removed to the Governor-gener- 
al's own residence within the precincts of Fort 
William. If ever the crisis found the man, Lord 
Canning was the man called for by that crisis in 
India. He had all the divining genius of the 
true statesman — the man who can rise to the 
height of some unexpected and new emergency ; 
and he had the cool courage of a practised con- 
queror. Among all the distracting counsels and 
wild stories poured in upon him from every side, 
he kept his mind clear. He never gave way ei- 
ther to anger or to alarm. If he ever showed a lit- 
tle impatience, it was only where panic would too 
openly have proclaimed itself by counsels of whole- 
sale cruelty. He could not, perhaps, always con- 
ceal from frightened people the fact that he rather 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



despised their terrors. Throughout the whole of 
that excited period there were few names, even 
among the chiefs of rebellion, on which fiercer 
denunciation was showered by Englishmen than 
the name of Lord Canning. Because he would 
not listen to the bloodthirsty clamors of mere 
frenzy he was nicknamed "Clemency Canning," 
as if clemency were an attribute of which a man 
ought to be ashamed. Indeed, for some time 
people wrote and spoke, not merely in India but 
in England, as if clemency were a thing to be rep- 
robated, like treason or crime. For a while it 
seemed a question of patriotism which would pro- 
pose the most savage and sanguinary measures 
of revenge. Mr. Disraeli, to do him justice, 
raised his voice in remonstrance against the wild 
passions of the hour, even when these passions 
were strongest and most general. He declared 
that if such a temper were encouraged we ought 
to take down from our altars the image of Christ 
and raise the statue of Moloch there. If people 
were so carried away in England, where the dan- 
ger was far remote, we can easily imagine what 
were the fears and passions roused in India, 
where the terror was, or might be, at the door 
of every one. Lord Canning was gravely embar- 
rassed by the wild urgencies and counsels of dis- 
tracted Englishmen, who were furious with him 
because he even thought of distinguishing friend 
from foe where native races were concerned. But 
he bore himself with perfect calmness. He was 
greatly assisted and encouraged in his counsels 
by his brave and noble wife, who proved herself 
in every way worthy to be the helpmate of such 
a man at such a crisis. He did not for a mo- 
ment under-estimate the danger ; but neither did 
he exaggerate its importance. He never allowed 
it to master him. He looked upon it with the 
quiet, resolute eye of one who is determined to 
be the conqueror in the struggle. 

Lord Canning saw that the one important 
thing was to strike at Delhi, which had proclaimed 
itself the head-quarters of the rebellion. He 
knew that English troops were on their way to 
China for the purpose of wreaking the wrongs of 
English subjects there, and he took on his own 
responsibility the bold step of intercepting them, 
and calling them to the work of helping to put 
down the Mutiny in India. The dispute with 
China he thought could well afford to wait, but 
with the Mutiny it must be now or never. India 
could not wait for reinforcements brought all the 
way from England. Lord Canning knew well 
enough, as well as the wildest alarmist could 
know, that the rebel flag must be forced to fly 
from some field before that help came, or it would 
fly over the dead bodies of those who then repre- 
sented English authority in India. He had, there- 
fore, no hesitation in appealing to Lord Elgin, 
the Envoy in charge of the Chinese expedition, 
to stop the troops that were on their way to 
China, and lend them to the service of India at 
such a need. Lord Elgin had the courage and 
the wisdom tD assent to the appeal at once. For- 
tune, too, was favorable to Canning in more ways 
than one. The Persian war was of short dura- 
tion. Sir James Outram was soon victorious, 
and Outram, therefore, and his gallant compan- 
ions, Colonel Jacob and Colonel Havelock, were 
able to lend their invaluable services to the Gov- 
ernor-general of India. Most important for 
Lord Canning's purposes was the manner in 
which the affairs of the Punjaub were managed 
at this crisis. The Punjaub was under the ad- 
ministration of one of the ablest public servants 
India has ever had — Sir John, afterwards Lord 
Lawrence. John Lawrence had from his youth 
been in the Civil Service of the East India Com- 
pany ; and when Lord Dalhousie annexed the 
Punjaub he made Lawrence and his soldier- 
brother — the gallant Sir Henry Lawrence— two 
out of a hoard of three for the administration of 
the affairs of the newly-acquired province. Af- 
terwards Sir John Lawrence was named the 
Chief Commissioner of the Punjaub, and by the 
promptitude and energy of himself and his sub- 
ordinates the province was completely saved for 
English rule at the outbreak of the Mutiny. 
Fortunately, the electric telegraph extended from 
Calcutta to Lahore, 'the chief city of the Punjaub. 
On May 11 the news of the outbreak at Meerut 



was brought to the authorities at Lahore. As it 
happened, Sir John Lawrence was then away at 
Rawul Pindee, in the Upper Punjaub; hut Mr. 
Robert Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner 
at Lahore, was invested with plenary power, and 
he showed that he could use it to advantage. 
Meean Meer is a large military cantonment five 
or six miles from Lahore, and there were then 
some four thousand native troops there, with only 
about thirteen hundred Europeans of the Queen's 
and the Company's service. There was no time 
to be lost. While the Punjaub held firm it was 
like a barrier raised at one side of the rebellious 
movement, not merely preventing it from going 
any farther in that direction, but keeping it pent 
up until the moment came when the blow 
from the other direction could fall upon it. The 
first thing to be done to strike effectively at the 
rebellion was to make an attack on Delhi ; and 
the possession of the Punjaub was of inestimable 
advantage to the authorities for that purpose. 
There was no actual reason to assume that the 
Sepoys in Meean Meer intended to join the re- 
bellion. There would be a certain danger of 
converting them into rebels if any rash movement 
were to be made for the purpose of guarding 
against treachery on their part. Either way was 
a serious responsibility, a momentous risk. The 
authorities soon made up their minds. Any risk 
would be better than that of leaving it in the 
power of the native troops to join the rebellion. 
A ball and supper were to be given at Lahore 
that night. To avoid creating any alarm it was 
arranged that the entertainments should take 
place. During the dancing and feasting Mr. 
Montgomery held a council of the leading offi- 
cials of Lahore, civil and military, and it was re- 
solved at once to disarm the native troops. A 
parade was ordered for daybreak at Meean 
Meer ; and on the parade-ground an order was 
given for a military movement which brought 
the heads of four columns of the native troops in 
front of twelve guns charged with grape, the ar- 
tillerymen with their port-fires lighted, and the 
soldiers of one of the Queen's regiments standing 
behind with loaded muskets. A command was 
given to the Sepoys to pile arms. They had im- 
mediate death before them if they disobeyed. 
They stood literally at the cannon's mouth. 
They piled their arms, which were borne away 
at once in carts by European soldiers, and all 
chances of a rebellious movement were over in 
that province, and the Punjaub was saved. 
Something of the same kind was done at Mool- 
tan, in the Lower Punjaub, later on ; and the 
province, thus assured to English civil and mili- 
tary authority, became a basis for some of the 
most important operations by which the Mutiny 
was crushed, and the sceptre of India restored to 
the Queen. 

Within little more than a fortnight from the 
occupation of Delhi by the rebels, the British 
forces under General Anson, the Commander-in- 
chief, were advancing on that city. The com- 
mander did not live to conduct any of the oper- 
ations. He died of cholera almost at the begin- 
ning of the march. The siege of Delhi proved 
long and difficult. Another general died, anoth- 
er had to give up his command, before the city 
was recaptured. It was justly considered by 
Lord Canning and by all the authorities as of 
the utmost importance that Delhi should be 
taken before the arrival of great reinforcements 
from home. Meanwhile the rebellion was break- 
ing out at new points almost everywhere in these 
northern and north-western regions. On May 
30 the Mutiny declared itself at Lucknow. Sir 
Henry Lawrence was Governor of Oudh. He 
endeavored to drive the rebels from the place, 
but the numbers of the mutineers were over- 
whelming. He had under his command, too, 
a force partly made up of native troops, and 
some of these deserted him in the battle. He 
had to retreat and to fortify the Residency at 
Lucknow, and remove all the Europeans, men, 
women, and children, thither, and patiently stand 
a siege. Lawrence himself had not long to en- 
dure the siege. On July 2 he had been up with 
the dawn, and after a great amount of work he 
lay on the sofa, not, as it has been well said, to 
rest, but to transact business in a recumbent po- 



sition. His nephew and another officer were 
with him. Suddenly a great crash was heard, 
and the room was filled with smoke and dust. 
One of his companions was flung to the ground. 
A shell had burst. When there was silence the 
officer who had been flung down called out, 
"Sir Henry, are you hurt?" "I am killed.'' 
was the answer that came faintly but firmly 
from Sir Henry Lawrence's lips. The shell had 
wounded him in the thigh so fearfully as to leave 
surgery no chance of doing anything for his re- 
lief. On the morning of July 4 he died calmly 
and in perfect submission to the will of Provi- 
dence. He had made all possible arrangements 
for his successor, and for the work to he done. 
He desired that on his tomb should be engrav- 
en merely the words, " Here lies Henry Law- 
rence, who tried to do his duty." The epitaph 
was a simple, truthful summing-up of a simple, 
truthful career. The man, however, was greater 
than the career. Lawrence had not opportunity 
to show in actual result the greatness of spirit 
that was in him. The immense influence he 
exercised over all who came within his reach 
bears testimony to his strength and nobleness 
of character better than any of the mere suc- 
cesses which his biographer can record. He 
was full of sympathy. His soul was alive to the 
noblest and purest aspirations. "It is the due 
admixture of romance and reality,'' he was him- 
self accustomed to say, "that best carries a man 
through life." No professional teacher or phi- 
losopher ever spoke a truer sentence. As one 
of his many admirers says of him — " what he 
said and wrote he did, or rather he was." Let 
the bitterest enemy of England write the history 
of her rule in India, and set down as against her 
every wrong that was done in her name, from 
those which Burke denounced to those which 
the Madras Commission exposed, he will have 
to say that men, many men, like Henry Law- 
rence, lived and died devoted to the cause of 
that rule, and the world will take account of 
the admission. 

During the later days of Sir Henry Lawrence's 
life it had another trouble added to it by the 
appeals which were made to him from Cawn- 
pore for a help which he could not give. The 
city of Cawnpore stands in the Doab, a peninsula 
between the Ganges and the Jumna, and is built 
on the south bank of the Ganges, there nearly a 
quarter of a mile broad in the dry season, and 
more than a mile across when swelled by the 
rains. In 1801 the territory lapsed into the 
possession of the Company. From that time it 
took rank as one of our first-class military sta- 
tions. The city commanded the bridge over 
which passed the high-road to Lucknow, the 
capital of our new province. The distance from 
Cawnpore to Lucknow is about fifty miles as the 
bird flies. At the time when the Mutiny broke 
out in Meerut there were some three thou- 
sand native soldiers in Cawnpore, consisting of 
two regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and 
a company of artillerymen. There were about 
three hundred officers and soldiers of English 
birth. The European or Eurasian population, 
including women and children, numbered about 
one thousand. These consisted of the officials, 
the railway people, some merchants and shop- 
keepers and their families. The native town 
had about sixty thousand inhabitants. The 
garrison was under the command of Sir Hugh 
Wheeler, a man of some seventy-five years of 
age, among the oldest of an old school of Ben- 
gal officers. The revolt was looked for at Cawn- 
pore from the moment when the news came of 
the rising at Meerut : and it was not long ex- 
pected before it came. Sir Hugh Wheeler ap- 
plied to Sir Henry Lawrence for help; Law- 
rence of course could not spare a man. Then Sir 
Hugh Wheeler remembered that he had a neigh- 
bor whom he believed to be friendly, despite of 
very recent warnings from Sir Henry Lawrence 
and others to the contrary. He called this 
neighbor to his assistance, and his invitation 
was promptly answered. The Nana Sahib came 
with two guns and some three hundred men to 
lend a helping hand to the English commander. 

The Nana Sahib resided at Bithoor, a small 
town twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore. 



40 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



He represented a grievance. Bajee Rao, Peish- 
wa of Poonah, was the last prince of one of the 
great Mahratta dynasties. The East India Com- 
pany believed him guilty of treachery against 
them, of bad government of his dominions, and 
so forth ; and they found a reason for dethroning 
him. He was assigned, however, a residence in 
Bithoor, and a large pension. He had no chil- 
dren, and he adopted as his heir Seereek Dhoon- 
doo Punth, the man who will be known to all 
time by the infamous name of Nana Sahib. 
According to Hindoo belief, it is needful for a 
man's eternal welfare that he leave a son behind 
him to perform duly his funeral rites ; and the 
adoption of a son is recognized as in every sense 
conferring on the adopted all the rights that a 
child of the blood could have. Bajee died in 
1851, and Nana Sahib claimed to succeed to all 
his possessions. Lord Dalhousie had shown in 
many instances a strangely unwise disregard of 
the principle of adoption. The claim of the 
Nana to the pension was disallowed. Nana 
Sahib sent a confidential agent to London to 
push his claim there. This man was a clever 
and handsome young Mohammedan who had at 
one time been a servant in an Anglo-Indian 
family, and had picked up a knowledge of French 
and English. His name was Azimoolah Khan. 
This emissary visited London in 1S54, and be- 
came a lion of the fashionable season. He did 
not succeed in winning over the Government to 
take any notice of the claims of his master, but 
being very handsome and of sleek and alluring 
manners, he became a favorite in the drawing- 
rooms of the metropolis, and was under the im- 
pression that an unlimited number of English- 
women of rank were dying with love for him. 
On his way home he visited Constantinople and 
the Crimea. It was then a dark hour for the 
fortunes of England in the Crimea, and Azimoo- 
lah Khan swallowed with glad and greedy ear 
all the alarmist rumors that were afloat in Stam- 
boul about the decay of England's strength, and 
the impending domination of Russian power over 
Europe and Asia. The Western visit of this 
man was not an event without important conse- 
quences. He doubtless reported to his master 
that the strength of England was on the wane ; 
and while stimulating his hatred and revenge, 
stimulated also his confidence in the chances of 
an effort to gratify both. With Azimoolah 
Khan's mission and its results ended the hopes 
of Nana Sahib for the success of his claims, and 
began, we may presume, his resolve to be re- 
venged. 

Nana Sahib, although his claim on the Eng- 
lish Government was not allowed, was still rich. 
He had the large private property of the man 
who had adopted him, and he had the residence 
at Bithoor. He kept up a sort of princely state. 
He never visited Cawnpore; the reason being, 
it is believed, that he would not have been re- 
ceived there with princely honors. But he was 
especially lavish of his attentions to English visit- 
ors, and his invitations went far and wide among 
the military and civil servants of the Crown and 
the Company. He cultivated the society of Eng- 
lish men and women ; he showered his civil- 
ities upon them. He did not speak or even un- 
derstand English, but he took a great interest in 
English history, customs, and literature. He 
was luxurious in the most thoroughly Oriental 
fashion; and Oriental luxury implies a great 
deal more than any experience of Western lux- 
ury would suggest. At the time with which we 
are dealing he was only about thirty-six years of 
age, but he was prematurely heavy and fat, and 
seemed to be as incapable of active exertion as of 
unkindly feeling. There can be little doubt that 
all this time he was a dissembler of more than 
common Eastern dissimulation. It appears al- 
most certain that while he was lavishing his 
courtesies and kindnesses upon Englishmen with- 
out discrimination, his heart was burning with a 
hatred to the whole British race. A sense of 
his wrongs had eaten him up. It is a painful 
thing to say, but it is necessary to the truth of 
this history, that Ins wrongs were genuine. He 
had been treated with injustice. According to 
all the recognized usages of his race and his re- 
ligion, he had a claim indefeasible in justice to 



the succession which had been unfairly and un- 
wisely denied to him. It was to Nana Sahib, 
then, that poor old Sir Hugh Wheeler in the 
hour of his distress applied for assistance. Most, 
gladly, we can well believe, did the Nana come. 
He established himself in Cawnpore with his 
guns and his soldiers. Sir Hugh Wheeler had 
taken refuge, when the Mutiny broke out, in an 
old military hospital with mud walls, scarcely four 
feet high, hastily thrown up around it, and a few 
guns of various calibre placed in position on the 
so-called intrenchments. Within these almost 
shadowy and certainly crumbling intrenchments 
were gathered about a thousand persons, of whom 
165 were men of every age and profession. The 
married women and grown daughters were about 
280; the children about the same number. Of 
the men there were probably 400 who could fight. 

As soon as Nana Sahib's presence became 
known in Cawnpore he was surrounded by the 
mutineers, who insisted that he must make com- 
mon cause with them and become one of their 
leaders. He put himself at their disposal. He 
gave notice to Sir Hugh Wheeler that if the 
intrenchments were not surrendered they would 
be instantly attacked. They were attacked. A 
general assault was made upon the miserable mud 
walls on June 12, but the resistance was heroic, 
and the assault failed. It was after that assault 
that the garrison succeeded in sending a message 
to Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, craving for 
the aid which it was absolutely impossible for 
him to give. From that time the fire of the mu- 
tineer army on the English intrenchments never 
ceased. Whenever a regular attack was made 
the assailants invariably came to grief. The lit- 
tle garrison, thinning in numbers every day and 
almost every hour, held out with splendid obsti- 
nacy, and always sent those who assailed it 
scampering back — except, of course, for such as- 
sailants as perforce kept their ground by the 
persuasion of the English bullets. The little 
population of women and children behind the 
intrenchments had no roof to shelter them from 
the fierce Indian sun. They cowered under the 
scanty shadow of the low walls, often at the 
imminent peril of the unceasing Sepoy bullets. 
The only water for their drinking was to be had 
from a single well, at which the guns of the as- 
sailants were unceasingly levelled. To go to the 
well and draw water became the task of self-sac- 
rificing heroes, who might with better chances 
of safety have led a forlorn hope. The water 
which the fainting women and children drank 
might have seemed to be reddened by blood ; for 
only at the price of blood was it ever obtained. 
It may seem a trivial detail, but it will count for 
much in a history of the sufferings of delicately 
nurtured English women, that from the begin- 
ning of the siege of the Cawnpore intrenchments 
to its tragic end, there was not one spongeful 
of water to be had for the purposes of personal 
cleanliness. The inmates of that ghastly garri- 
son were dying like Hies. One does not know 
which to call the greater — the suffering of the 
women or the bravery of the men. 

A conviction began to spread among the mu- 
tineers that it was of no use attempting to con- 
quer these terrible British sahibs ; that so long 
as one of them was alive he would be as formi- 
dable as a wild beast in its lair. The Sepoys be- 
came unwilling to come too near the low, crum- 
bling walls of the intrenchment. Those walls 
might have been leaped over as easily as that of 
Romulus; but of what avail to know that, when 
from behind them always came the fatal fire of 
the Englishmen ? It was no longer easy to get 
the mutineers to attempt anything like an as- 
sault. The English themselves began to show a 
perplexing kind of aggressive enterprise, and took 
to making little sallies in small numbers, indeed, 
but with astonishing effect, on any bodies of 
Sepoys who happened to be anywhere near. 
Utterly, overwhelmingly, preposterously outnum- 
bered as the Englishmen were, there were mo- 
ments when it began to seem almost possible 
that they might actually keep back their assail- 
ants until some English army could come to their 
assistance and take a terrible vengeance upon 
Cawnpore. Nana Sahib began to find that he 
could not take by assault those wretched in- 



trenchments ; and he could not wait to starve 
the garrison out. He therefore resolved to treat 
with the English. The terms, it is believed, were 
arranged by the advice and assistance of Tantia 
Topee, his lieutenant, and Azimoolah Khan, the 
favorite of English drawing-rooms. An offer was 
sent to the intrenchments, the terms of which are 
worthy of notice. ''All those," it said, "who 
are in no way connected with the acts of Lord 
Dalhousie, and who are willing to lay down their 
arms, shall receive a safe passage to Allahabad." 
The terms had to be accepted : there was noth- 
ing else to be done. The English people were 
promised, during the course of the negotiations, 
sufficient supplies of food and boats to carry them 
to Allahabad, which was now once more in the 
possession of England. The relief was unspeaka- 
ble for the survivors of that weary defence. The 
women, the children, the wounded, the sick, the 
dying, welcomed any terms of release. Not the 
faintest suspicion crossed any mind of the treach- 
ery that was awaiting them. How, indeed, could 
there be any such suspicion ? Not for years and 
years had even Oriental warfare given example 
of such practice as that which Nana Sahib and 
the graceful and civilized Azimoolah Khan had 
now in preparation. 

The time for the evacuation of the garrison 
came. The boats were in readiness on the Gan- 
ges. The long procession of men, women, and 
children passed slowly down ; very slowly in 
some instances, because of the number of sick 
and wounded by which its progress was encum- 
bered. Some of the chief among the Nana's 
counsellors took their stand in a little temple on 
the margin of the river, to superintend the em- 
barkation and the work that was to follow it. 
Nana Sahib himself was not there. It is under- 
stood that he purposely kept away; he preferred 
to hear of the deed when it was done. His 
faithful lieutenant, Tantia Topee, had given or- 
ders, it seems, that when a trumpet sounded, 
some work, for which he had arranged, should 
begin. The wounded and the women were got 
into the boats in the first instance. The officers 
and men were scrambling in afterwards. Sud- 
denly the blast of a trumpet was heard. The 
boats were of the kind common on the rivers of 
India, covered with roofs of straw, and looking, 
as some accounts describe them, not unlike float- 
ing hay- stacks. The moment the bugle sound- 
ed the straw of the boat-roofs bhized up, and the 
native rowers began to make precipitately for the 
shore. They had set fire to the thatch, and 
were now escaping from the flames they had pur- 
posely lighted up. At the same moment there 
came from both shores of the river thick showers 
of grapeshot and musketry. The banks of the 
Ganges seemed in an instant alive with shot; a 
very rain of bullets poured in upon the devoted 
inmates of the boats. To add to the horrors of 
the moment, if, indeed, it needed any addition, 
nearly all the boats stuck fast in mud-banks, and 
the occupants became fixed targets for the fire 
of their enemies. Only three of the boats floated. 
Two of these drifted to the Oudh shore, and 
those on board them were killed at once. The 
third floated farther along with the stream, re- 
served for further adventures and horrors. The 
firing ceased when Tantia Topee and his con- 
federates thought that enough had been done; 
and the women and children who were still alive 
were brought ashore and carried in forlorn pro- 
cession back again through the town where they 
had suffered so much, and which they had hoped 
that they were leaving for ever. They were 
about 125 in number, women and children. 
Some of them were wounded. There were a few 
well - disposed natives who saw them and were 
sorry for them; who had perhaps served them, 
and experienced their kindness in other days, 
and who now had some grateful memory of it, 
which they dared not express by any open pro- 
fession of sympathy. Certain of these after- 
wards described the English ladies as they saw 
them pass. They were bedraggled and dis- 
hevelled, these poor English women ; their 
clothes were in tatters; some of them were 
wounded, and the blood was trickling from their 
feet and legs. They were carried to a place 
called the Savada House, a large building, once 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



*1 



a charitable institution bearing the name of Sal- 
vador, which hail been softened into Savada by 
Asiatic pronunciation'. On board the one boat 
which had filiated with the stream were more 
than a hundred persons. The boat was attacked 
by a constant fire from botli banks as it drifted 
along. At length a party of some twelve men, 
or thereabouts, landed with the bold object of at- 
tacking their assailants and driving them back. 
In their absence the boat was captured by some 
of the rebel gangs, and the women and the 
wounded were brought back to Cawnpore. Some 
sixty men, twenty - five women, and four children 
were thus recaptured. The men were imme- 
diately shot. It may be said at once, that of the 
gallant little party who went ashore to attack the 
enemy, hand to hand, four finally escaped, after 
adventures so perilous and so extraordinary that 
a professional story-teller would hardly venture 
to make them part of a fictitious narrative. 

The Nana had now a considerable number of 
English women in his hands. They were re- 
moved, after a while, from their first prison- 
house to a small building north of the canal, and 
between the native city and the Ganges. Here 
they were cooped up in the closest manner, ex- 
cept when some of them were taken out in the 
evening and set to the work of grinding corn for 
the use of their captors. Cholera and dysentery 
set in among these unhappy .sufferers, and some 
eighteen women and seven children died. Let it 
be said, for the credit of womanhood, that the 
royal widows, the relicts of the Nana's father by 
adoption, made many efforts to protect the cap- 
tive Englishwomen, and even declared that they 
would throw themselves and their children from 
the palace windows if any harm were done to 
the prisoners. We have only to repeat here, 
that as a matter of fact no indignities, other than 
that of the compulsory corn - grinding, were put 
upon the English ladies. They were doomed, 
one and all, to suffer death, but they were not, 
as at one time was believed in England, made to 
long for death as an escape from shame. Mean- 
while the prospects of the Nana and his rebellion 
were growing darker and darker. He must have 
begun to know by this time that he had no 
chance of establishing himself as a ruler any- 
where in India. The English had not been 
swept out of the country with a rush. The first 
flood of the Mutiny hud broken on their defences, 
and already the tide was falling. The Nana well 
knew it never would rise again to the same height 
in his day. The English were coming on. Neill 
had recaptured Allahabad, and cleared the coun- 
try all round it of any traces of rebellion. Have- 
lock was now moving forward from Allahabad 
towards Cawnpore, with six cannon and about a 
thousand English soldiers. Very small in point 
of numbers was that force when compared with 
that which Nana Sahib could even still rally 
round him ; but no one in India now knew better 
than Nana Sahib what extraordinary odds the 
English could afford to give with the certainty of 
winning. Havelock's march was a series of vic- 
tories, although he was often in such difficulties 
that the slightest display of real generalship, or 
even soldiership, on the part of his opponents, 
might have stopped his advance. He had one 
encounter with the lieutenant of the Nana, who 
had under his command nearly four thousand 
men and twelve guns, and Havelock won a com- 
plete victory in about ten minutes. He defeated 
in the same off- hand way various other chiefs 
of the Mutiny. He was almost at the gates of 
Cawnpore. 

Then it appears to have occurred to the Nana, 
or to have been suggested to him, that it would 
be inconvenient to have his English captives re- 
captured by the enemy, their countrymen. It 
may be that in the utter failure of all his plans 
and hopes he was anxious to secure some satis- 
faction, to satiate his hatred in some way. It 
was intimated to the prisoners that they were to 
die. Among them were three or four men. 
These were called out and shot. Then some Se- 
poys were sent to the house where the women 
still were, and ordered to fire volleys through the 
windows. This they did, but apparently with- 
out doing much harm. Some persons are of 
opinion, from such evidence as can be got, that 



the men purposely fired high above the level of 
the floor, to avoid killing any of the women and 
children. In the evening five men — two Hindoo 
peasants, two Mohammedan butchers, and one 
Mohammedan wearing the red uniform of the 
Nana's body-guard — were sent up to the house, 
and entered it. Incessant shrieks were heard to 
come from that fearful house. The Mohammedan 
soldier came out to the door holding in his hand 
a sword-hilt from which tiie blade had been bro- 
ken off, and he exchanged this now useless instru- 
ment for a weapon in proper condition. Not once 
but twice this performance took place. Evidently 
the task imposed on these men was hard work for 
the sword-blades. After a while the five men 
came out of the now quiet house and locked the 
doors behind them. During that time they had 
killed nearly all of the English women and child- 
ren. They had slaughtered them like beasts in 
the shambles. In the morning the five men 
came again with several attendants to clear out 
the house of the captives. Their task was to 
tumble all the bodies into a dry well beyond 
some trees that grew near. Any of the bodies 
that had clothes worth taking were carefully 
stripped before being consigned to this open 
grave. When Cawnpore was afterwards taken 
by the English those who had to look down into 
that well saw a sight the like of which no man 
in modern days had ever seen elsewhere. No at- 
tempt shall be made to describe it here. When 
the house of the massacre itself was entered, its 
floors and its walls told with terrible plainness 
of the scene they had witnessed. The plaster 
of the walls was scored and seamed with sword- 
slashes low down and in the corners, as if the 
poor women had crouched down in their mortal 
fright with some wild hope of escaping the 
blows. The floor was strewn with scraps of 
dresses, women's faded, ragged finery, frilling, 
underclothing, broken combs, shoes, and tresses 
of hair. There were some small and neatly sev- 
ered curls of hair, too, which had fallen on the 
ground, but evidently had never been cut off 
by the rude weapon of a professional butcher. 
These, doubtless, were keepsakes that had been 
treasured to the last, parted with only when life 
and all were going. One or two scraps of paper 
were found which recorded deaths and such like 
interruptions of the monotony of imprisonment; 
but nothing more. The well of horrors has since 
been filled up, and a memorial chapel surround- 
ed by a garden built upon the spot. 

Something, however, has still to be told of the 
Nana and his fortunes. He made one last stand 
against the victorious English in front of Cawn- 
pore, and was completely defeated. He galloped 
into the city on a bleeding and exhausted horse ; 
he fled thence to Bithoor, his residence. He bad 
just time left, it is said, to order the murder of a 
separate captive, a woman wdio had previously 
been overlooked or purposely left behind. Then 
he took flight in the direction of the Nepaulese 
marches; and he soon disappears from history. 
Nothing of his fate was ever known. Many years 
afterwards England and India were treated to a 
momentary sensation by a story of the capture 
of Nana Sahib. But the man who was arrested 
proved to be an entirely different person ; and 
indeed from the moment of his arrest few be- 
lieved him to be the long-lost murderer of the 
English women. In days more superstitious 
than our own popular faith would have found 
an easy explanation of the mystery which sur- 
rounded the close of Nana Sahib's career. He 
had done, it would have been said, the work of 
a fiend ; and he had disappeared as a fiend would 
do when his task was accomplished. 

The capture of Delhi was effected on Septem- 
ber 20. Brigadier-general Nicholson led the 
storming columns, and paid for his bravery and 
success the price of a gallant life. Nicholson 
was one of the bravest and most capable officers 
whom the war produced. It is worthy of record 
as an evidence of the temper aroused even in men 
from whom better things might have been ex- 
pected, that Nicholson strongly urged the pass- 
ing of a law to authorize Haying alive, impale- 
ment, or burning of the murderers of the women 
and children in Delhi. He urged this view 
again and again, and deliberately argued it on 



grounds alike of policy and principle. The fact is 
recorded here, not in mere disparagement of a 
brave soldier, but as an illustration of the manner 
in which the old elementary passions of man's 
untamed condition can return upon him in his 
pride of civilization and culture, and make him 
their slave again. The taking of Delhi was fol- 
lowed by an act of unpardonable bloodshed. A 
young officer, Ilodsou, the leader of the little 
force known as Ilodson's Horse, was acting as 
chief of the Intelligence Department, lie was 
especially distinguished by an extraordinary 
blending of cool, calculating craft and reckless 
daring. By the help of native spies, Hodson dis- 
covered that when Delhi was taken the king and 
his family had taken refuge in the tomb of the 
Emperor Hoomavoon, a structure which, with the 
buildings surrounding and belonging to it, con- 
stituted a sort of suburb in itself. Hodson went 
boldly to this place with a few of his troopers 
and captured the three royal princes of Delhi. 
He tried them as rebels taken red handed, and 
borrowing a carbine from one of his troopers, 
he shot them dead with his own hand. Their 
corpses, half-naked, were exposed for some days 
at one of the gates of Delhi. Hodson was killed 
not long after; we might well wish to be free to 
allow him to rest without censure in bis untimely 
grave. He was a brave and clever soldier, but 
one who unfortunately allowed a fierce temper to 
overrule the better instincts of his nature and 
the guidance of a cool judgment. 

General Havelock made his way to the relief 
of Lucknow. Sir James Outran), who had re- 
turned from Persia, had been scut to Oudh with 
complete civil and military authority. He would, 
in the natural order of things, have superseded 
Havelock, but he refused to rob a brave and suc- 
cessful comrade of the fruits of his toil and peril, 
and he accompanied Havelock as a volunteer. 
Havelock was enabled to continue his victorious 
march, and on September 25 he was able to re- 
lieve the besieged English at Lucknow. His 
coming, it. can hardly be doubted, saved the wom- 
en and children from such a massacre as that 
of Cawnpore ; but Havelock had not the force 
that might have driven the rebels out of the field, 
and if England had not been prepared to make 
greater efforts for the rescue of her imperilled 
people, it is but too probable that the troops 
whom Havelock brought to the relief of Lucknow 
would only have swelled the number of the vic- 
tims. But in the mean time the stout soldier, 
Sir Colin Campbell, whom we have, already heard 
of in the Crimean campaign, had been appointed 
Commander-in-chief of the Indian forces, and 
had arrived in India. He set out. for Lucknow. 
He had under his command only some 5,000 
men, a force miserably inferior in number to that 
of the enemy ; but in those days an English offi- 
cer thought himself in good condition to attack 
if the foe did not outnumber him by more than 
four or five to one. A series of actions was 
fought by Sir Colin Campbell and his little force 
attacking the enemy on one side, who were at- 
tacked at the same time by the besieged garrison 
of the residency. On the morning of Novem- 
ber 17, by the combined efforts of both forces, 
the enemy was dislodged. Sir Colin Campbell 
resolved, however, that the residency must be 
evacuated; and accordingly on the 1 1Kb heavy 
batteries were opened against the enemy's posi- 
tion, as if for the purpose of assault, and under 
cover of this operation the women, the sick, and 
the wounded were quietly removed to the Dil- 
koosha, a small palace in a park about five miles 
from the residency, which had been captured by 
Sir Colin Campbell on his way to attack the city. 
By midnight of the 22d the wdiole garrison, 
without the loss of a single man, had left the res- 
idency. Two or three days more saw the troops 
established at Alumbagh, some four miles from 
the residency, in another direction from that of 
the Dilkoosha. 

Alumbagh is an isolated cluster of buildings, 
with grounds and enclosure to the south of Luck- 
now. The name of this place is memorable for- 
ever in the history of the war. It was there that 
Havelock closed his glorious career. He was at- 
tacked with dysentery, and died on November 2+. 
The Queen created him a baronet, or rather af- 



42 



A SHORT HISTORY' OF OUR OWN TIME*. 



fixed that honor to his name on the 27th of the 
same month, not knowing then that the soldier's 
time for struggle and for honor was over. The 
title was transferred to his son, the present Sir 
Henry Havelock, who had fought gallantly under 
his father's eyes. The fame of Haveloek's ex- 
ploits reached England only a little in advance 
of the news of his death. So many brilliant 
deeds had seldom in the history of our wars been 
crowded into days so few. All the fame of that 
glorious career was the work of some strenuous 
splendid weeks. Haveloek's promotion had been 
slow. He had not much for which to thank the 
favor of his superiors. No family influence, no 
powerful patrons or friends had made his slow 
progress more easy. He was more than sixty 
when the Mutiny broke out. He was born in 
April, 1795; he was educated at the Charter- 
house, London, where his grave, studious ways 
procured for him the nickname of" Old Phlos "— 
the school-boy's "short" for "old philosopher." 
He went out to India in 1823, and served in the 
Burmese war of 1824, and the Sikh war of 1845. 
He was a man of grave and earnest character, 
a Baptist by religion, and strongly penetrated 
with a conviction that the religious spirit ought 
to pervade and inform all the duties of military as 
well as civil life. By his earnestness and his ex- 
ample he succeeded in animating those whom 
he led with similar feelings; and " Haveloek's 
saints " were well known through India by this 
distinctive appropriate title. " Haveloek's saints " 
showed, whenever they had an opportunity, that 
they could fight as desperately as the most reck- 
less sinners ; and their commander found the 
fama flung in his way, across the path of his 
duty, which he never would have swerved one 
inch from that path to seek. Amid all the ex- 
citement of hope and fear, passion and panic, in 
England, there was time for the whole heart of 
the nation to feel pride in Haveloek's career, 
and sorrow for his untimely death. Untimely? 
Was it after all untimely? Since when has it 
not been held the crown of a great career that 
the hero dies at the moment of accomplished 
victory ? 

Sir Colin Campbell left General Outram in 
charge of Alumbagh, and himself hastened to- 
wards Cawnpore. A large hostile force, com- 
posed chiefly of the revolted army of Scindia, 
the ruler of Gwalior, had marched upon Cawn- 
pore. General Windham, who held the com- 
mand there, had gone out to attack them. He 
was compelled to retreat, not without severe 
loss, to his intrenchments at Cawnpore, and the 
enemy occupied the city itself. Sir Colin Camp- 
bell attacked the rebels at one place ; Sir Hope 
Grant attacked them at another, and Cawnpore 
was retaken. Sir Colin Campbell then turned 
his attention to reconquering the entire city of 
Lucknow. It was not until March 19, 1858, 
that Lucknow fell completely into the hands of 
the English. Our operations had been almost 
entirely by artillery, and had been conducted 
with consummate prudence as well as boldness, 
and our loss was therefore very small, while 
the enemy suffered most severely. Among our 
wounded was the gallant leader of the naval brig- 
ade, Sir William Peel, son of the great states- 
man. Sir William Peel died at Cawnpore short- 
ly after of small-pox, his death remarked and 
lamented even amid all the noble deaths of 
that eventful time. One name must not be for- 
gotten among those who endured the siege of 
Lucknow. It is that of Dr. Brydon, whom we 
last saw as he appeared under the walls of Jel- 
lalabad, the one survivor come back to tell the 
tale of the disastrous retreat from Cabul. 

Practically, the reconquest of Lucknow was 
the final blow in the suppression of the great 
Bengal Mutiny. Some episodes of the war, how- 
ever, w r ere still worthy of notice. For example, 
the rebels seized Gwalior, the capital of the 
Maharajah Scindia, who escaped to Agra. The 
English had to attack the rebels, retake Gwalior, 
and restore Scindia. The Maharajah Scindia 
of Gwalior had deserved well of the English 
Government. Under every temptation, every 
threat, and many profound perils from the re- 
bellion, he had remained firm to his friendship. 
So, too, had Holkar, the Maharajah of the In- 



dore territory. The country owes much to those 
two princes, for the part they took at her hour 
of need ; and she has not, we are glad to think, 
proved herself ungrateful. »One of those who 
fought to the last on the rebels' side was the 
Ranee, or Princess, of Jhansi, whose territory, 
as we have already seen, had been one of our 
annexations. For months after the fall of Delhi 
she contrived to baffle Sir Hugh Rose and the 
English. She led squadrons in the field. She 
fought with her own hand. She was engaged 
against us in the battle for the possession of 
Gwalior. In the uniform of a cavalry officer 
she led charge after charge, and she was killed 
among those who resisted to the last. Her 
body was found upon the field, scarred with 
wounds enough in the front to have done credit 
to any hero. Sir Hugh Rose paid her the well- 
deserved tribute which a generous conqueror 
is always glad to be able to offer. He said, in 
his general order, that "the best man upon the 
side of the enemy was the woman found dead, 
the Ranee of Jhansi." 

It is not necessary to describe, with any mi- 
nuteness of detail, the final spasms of the rebel- 
lion. Tantia Topee, the lieutenant of Nana 
Sahib, was taken prisoner in April, 1859, was 
tried for his share in the Cawnpore massacre, 
and was hanged like any vulgar criminal. The 
old King of Delhi was also put on trial, and, be- 
ing found guilty, was sentenced to transporta- 
tion. He was sent to the Cape of Good Hope, 
but the colonists there refused to receive him, 
and this last of the line of the Grand Moguls 
had to go begging for a prison. He was finally 
carried to Rangoon, in British Burmah. On 
December 20, 1858, Lord Clyde, who had been 
Sir Colin Campbell, announced to the Governor- 
general that the rebellion was at an end, and on 
May 1, 1859, there was a public thanksgiving in 
England for the pacification of India. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE END OF " JOHN COMPANY." 

While these things were passing in India it 
is needless to say that the public opinion of Eng- 
land was distracted by agitation and by oppos- 
ing counsels. For a long time the condition of 
Indian affairs had been regarded in England 
with something like absolute indifference. In 
the House of Commons a debate on any ques- 
tion connected with India was as strictly an af- 
fair of experts as a discussion on some local gas 
or water bill. The House in general did not even 
affect to have any interest in it. The officials 
who had to do with Indian affairs; the men on 
the Opposition benches who had held the same 
offices while their party was in power; these, 
and two or three men who had been in India, 
and were set down as crotchety because they 
professed any concern in its mode of govern- 
ment — such were the politicians who carried on 
an Indian debate, and who had the House all to 
themselves while the discussion lasted. The In- 
dian Mutiny startled the public feeling of Eng- 
land out of this state of unhealthy languor. 
First came the passion and panic, the cry for 
blood, the wholesale executions, the blowing of 
rebels from guns ; then came a certain degree 
of reaction, and some eminent Englishmen were 
found to express alarm at the very sanguinary 
methods of repression and of punishment that 
were in favor among most of our fellow-country- 
men in India. 

It was during this season of reaction that the 
famous discussions took place on Lord Canning's 
proclamation. On March 3, 1S58, the procla- 
mation was issued from Allahabad to the chiefs 
of Oudh, and it announced that, with the ex- 
ception of the lands then held by six loyal 
proprietors of the province, the proprietary right 
in the whole of the soil of Oudh was transferred 
to the British Government, which would dis- 
pose of it in such manner as might seem fitting. 
The disposal, however, was indicated by the 
terms of the proclamation. To all chiefs and 
landholders who should at once surrender to the 
Chief Commissioner of Oudh it was promised 
that their lives should be spared, " provided that 
their hands are unstained by English blood mur- 



derously shed;" but it was stated that, "as 
regards any farther indulgence which may 
be extended to thera, and the conditions in 
which they may hereafter be placed, they must 
throw themselves upon the justice and mercy 
of the British Government." Read by the light 
of literalness, this proclamation unquestionably 
seemed to amount to an absolute confiscation 
of the whole soil of Oudh ; for even the favored 
land-owners who were to retain their properties 
were given to understand that they retained 
them by the favor of the Crown and as a reward 
for their loyalty. Sir James Outram wrote at once 
to Lord Canning, pointing out that there were 
not a dozen landholders in Oudh who had not 
either themselves borne arms against us or as- 
sisted the rebels with men or money, and that 
therefore the effect of the proclamation would 
be to confiscate the entire proprietary right in the 
province and to make the chiefs and landlords 
desperate, and that the result would be a " gueril- 
la war for the extirpation, root and branch, of 
this class of men, which will involve the loss of 
thousands of Europeans by battle, disease, and 
exposure." Lord Canning consented to insert 
in the proclamation a clause announcing that a 
liberal indulgence would be granted to those 
who should promptly come forward to aid in the 
restoration of order, and that "the Governor- 
general will be ready to view liberally the claims 
which they may thus acquire to a restitution of 
their former rights." 

In truth, it was never the intention of Lord 
Canning to put in force any cruel and sweeping 
policy of confiscation. Lord Canning had come 
to the conclusion that the English Government 
must start afresh in their dealings with Oudh. 
He came to the conclusion that the necessary 
policy for all parties concerned was to make of 
the Mutiny, and the consequent reorganization, 
an opportunity, not for a wholesale confiscation 
of the land, but for a measure which should de- 
clare that the land was held under the power 
and right of the English Government. The prin- 
ciple of his policy was somewhat like that adopt- 
ed by Lord Durham in Canada. It seized the 
power of a dictator over life and property, that 
the dictator might be able to restore peace and 
order at. the least cost in loss and suffering to the 
province and the population whose affairs it was 
his task to administer. But it may be freely 
admitted that on the face of it the proclamation 
of Lord Canning looked strangely despotic. 
Some of the most independent and liberal Eng- 
lishmen took this view of it. Men who had sup- 
ported Lord Canning through all the hours of 
clamor against him felt compelled to express 
disapproval of what they understood to be his 
new policy. It so happened that Lord Ellenbor- 
ough was then President of the Board of Control, 
and Lord Ellenborough was a man who always 
acted on impulse, and had a passion for fine 
phrases. He had a sincere love of justice, ac- 
cording to his lights; but he had a still stronger 
love for antithesis. Lord Ellenborough therefore 
had no sooner received a copy of Lord Canning's 
proclamation than he despatched upon his own 
responsibility a rattling condemnation of the 
whole proceeding. The question was taken up 
immediately in both Houses of Parliament, 
Lord Shaftesbury in the House of Lords moved 
a resolution declaring that the House regarded 
with regret and serious apprehension the sending 
of such a despatch, as such a course must preju- 
dice our rule in India by weakening the authority 
of the Governor-general and encouraging the 
resistance of rebels still in arms. A similar 
motion was introduced by Mr. Cardwell in the 
House of Commons. In both Houses the ar- 
raignment of the Ministry proved a failure. Lord 
Ellenborough at once took upon himself the whole 
responsibility of an act which was undoubtedly 
all his own, and he resigned his office. The res- 
olution was therefore defeated in the House of 
Lords on a division, and had to be withdrawn in 
a rather ignominious manner in the House of 
Commons. Lord Canning continued his policy, 
the policy which he had marked out for himself, 
with signal success. Within a few weeks after 
the capture of Lucknow almost all the large 
land-owners had tendered their allegiance. Lord 



A SHORT HISTORY of OUR OWN TIMES. 



13 



Canning impressed upon his officers the duty of 
making their rule as considerate and conciliatory 
as possible. The new system established in Oudh 
was based upon the principle of recognizing the 
Talookdars as responsible landholders, while so 
limiting their power by the authority of the Gov- 
ernment as to get lid of old abuses, and protect 
the occupiers and cultivators of the soil. Can- 
ning, like Durham, only lived long enough to hear 
the general acknowledgment that he had done 
well for the country he was sent to govern, and 
for the country in whose name and with whose 
authority he went forth. 

The rebellion pulled down with it a famous 
old institution, the government of the East India 
Company. Before the Mutiny had been entirely 
crashed the rule of " John Company " came to an 
end. The administration of India had, indeed, 
long ceased to be under the control of the Com- 
pany as it was in the days of Warren Hastings. 
A Board of Directors, nominated partly by the 
Crown and partly by the Company, sat in Lead- 
enhall Street, and gave general directions for 
the government of India. But the Parliamentary 
department, called the Board of Control, had the 
right of reviewing and revising the decisions of 
the Company. The Crown had the power of 
nominating the Governor-general, and the Com- 
pany had only the power of recalling him. 
This odd and perhaps unparalleled system of 
double government had not much to defend it on 
strictly logical grounds ; and the moment a great 
crisis came it was natural that all the blame of 
difficulty and disaster should be laid upon its 
head. With the beginning of the Mutiny the 
impression began to grow up in the public mind 
here that something of a sweeping nature must 
he done for the reorganization of India; and be- 
fore long this vague impression crystallized into 
a conviction that England must take Indian ad- 
ministration into her own hands, and that the 
time had come for the fiction of rule by a trading 
company to be absolutely given up. In the be- 
ginning of IS.jS Lord Palmerston introduced a 
bill to transfer the authority of the Company 
formally and absolutely to the Crown. The 
plan of the scheme was that there were to be a 
president and a council of eight members, to 
be nominated by the Government. There was a 
large majority in the House of Commons in favor 
of the bill ; but the agitation caused by the at- 
tempt to assassinate the Emperor of the French, 
and Palmerston's ill-judged and ill-timed Con- 
spiracy Bill, led to the sudden overthrow of his 
Government. When Lord Derby succeeded to 
power he brought in a bill for the better gov- 
ernment of India at once: but the measure was 
a failure. Then Lord John Russell proposed 
that the House should proceed by way of reso- 
lutions—that is, that the lines of a scheme of 
legislation should be laid down by a series of 
resolutions in committee of the whole House, 
and that upon those lines the Government should 
construct a measure. The suggestion was ea- 
gerly welcomed, and after many nights of dis- 
cussion a basis of legislation was at last agreed 
upon. This hill passed into law in the autumn 
of 1858, and for the remainder of Lord Derby's 
tenure of power his son, Lord Stanley, was Se<-- 
ret.uy of State for India. The bill, which was 
called "An Act for the better government of 
India, " provided that all the territories previous- 
ly under the government of the East Indian 
Company were to be vested in her Majesty, and 
all the Company's powers to be exercised in her 
name. One of her Majesty's principal Secreta- 
taries of State was to have all the power pre- 
viously exercised by the Company, or by the 
Board of Control. The Secretary was to be 
assisted by a Council of India, to consist of 
fifteen members, of whom seven were to be 
elected by the Court of Directors from their 
own body, and eight nominated by the Crown. 
The vacancies among the nominated were to be 
filled up by the Crown; tho^e among tin- elect- 
ed by the remaining members of the Council 
for a certain time, but afterwards by the Secre- 
tary of State for India. The competitive princi- 
ple for the Civil Service was extended to its ap- 
plication and made thoroughly practical. The 
military and naval forces of the Company were 



to be deemed the forces of her Majesty. A 
clause was introduced declaring that, except for 
the purpose of preventing or repelling actual in- 
vasion of India, the Indian revenues should not 
without the consent of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment be applicable to defray the expenses of 
any military operation carried on beyond the 
external frontiers of her .Majesty's Indian pos- 
sessions. Another clause enacted that whenever 
an order was sent to India directing the com- 
mencement of hostilities by her Majesty's forces 
there, the fact should be communicated to Par- 
liament within three months, if Parliament were 
then sitting, or if not, within one month after 
its next meeting. The Viceroy and Governor- 
general was to be supreme in India, but was to 
be assisted by a Council. India now has nine 
provinces, each under its own civil government, 
and independent of the others, but all subordi- 
nate to the authority of the Viceroy. In accord- 
ance with this Act the government of the Com- 
pany, the famed, "John Company," formally 
ceased on September 1, 1858; and the Queen 
was proclaimed throughout India, in the follow- 
ing November, with Lord Canning for her first 
Viceroy. It was but fitting that the man who 
had borne the strain of that terrible crisis, who 
had brought our Indian Empire safely through 
it all, and who had had to endure so much oblo- 
quy, and to live down so much calumny, should 
have his name consigned to history as that of the 
first of the line of British Viceroys in India. 

CHAPTER XV. 

THE CONSPIRACY BILL. 

The last chapter has told us that Lord Pal- 
merston introduced a measure to transfer to the 
Crown the government of India, but that unex- 
pected events in the meanwhile compelled him 
to resign office, and called Lord Derby and Mr. 
Disraeli to power. These events had nothing 
to do directly with the general policy of Palmer- 
ston or Lord Derby. At mid-day of January 14, 
18."i8, Lord Palmerston seemed to be as popular 
and as strong as a minister well could be. But 
on the evening of January 14, Felice Orsini, an 
Italian exile, made his memorable attempt to 
assassinate the Emperor of the French. Orsini 
lost himself, and he drew the English Govern- 
ment down at the same time. Felice Orsini 
was well known in England. He was a hand- 
some, soldierly-looking man. with intensely dark 
eyes and dark beard, whose one great object 
was to endeavor to rouse up the English people 
to some policy of intervention on behalf of Italy 
against Austria. After a while, however, he 
found out that England would do nothing. 
The English Liberals, with the exception of a 
very few enthusiasts, were just as much opposed 
to the principle of intervention in the affairs of 
other States as the Conservatives. But Orsini 
set himself to devise some explanation for what 
was simply the prudent and just determination 
of all the statesmen and leading politicians of 
the country. He found the explanation in the 
subtle influence of the Emperor of the French, 
and he appears then to have allowed the idea to 
get possession of him that the removal of the 
Emperor of the French from the scene was an 
indispensable preliminary to any policy having 
for its object the emancipation of Italy from 
Austrian rule. He brooded on this idea until it 
became a project and a passion. It transformed 
a soldier and a patriot into an assassin. 

On January 14, Orsini and his fellow-conspira- 
tors made their attempt in the Rue Lepelletier, 
in Paris. As the Emperor and Empress of the 
French were driving up to the door of the < Ipeiu- 
house in that street Orsini and his companions 
Hung at and into the carriage three shells or 
bombs shaped like a pear, and filled with deto- 
nating powder. The shells exploded, and killed 
and wounded many persons. So minute were 
the fragments in which the bombs burst that 
51(1 wounds, great and little, were inflicted by the 
explosion. Ten persons were killed. 156 were 
wounded. It was said at the time that the Or- 
sini plot frightened the Emperor of tin- French 
into taking up the cause of Italy. Historical 
revelations made at a later period show that this 



is altogether a mistake. We now know that at 
the time of the Congress of Paris Count Cavour 
had virtually arranged with the Emperor the 
plans of policy which were afterwards carried 
out. and that even before that time Cavour was 
satisfied in his own mind as to the ultimate cer- 
tainty of Louis Napoleon's co-operation. Those 
who are glad to see Italy a nation may be glad 
to know that Orsini's bombs had nothing to do 
with her success. Four persons were put on 
trial as participators in the attempt, three of 
them having actually thrown the bombs. Only 
two, however, were executed, Orsini and Pierri ; 
the other two were sentenced to penal servitude 
for life. 

In France an outburst of anger followed the 
attempt in the Hue Lepelletier ; but the anger 
was not so much against Orsini as against Eng- 
land. One of the persons charged along with 
Orsini, although he was not tried in Paris, for he 
could not be found there, was a Frenchman, Si- 
mon Bernard, who had long been living in Lon- 
don. It was certain that many of the arrange- 
ments for the plot were made in London. The 
bombs were manufactured in Birmingham, and 
were ordered for Orsini by an Englishman. It 
was known that Orsini had many friends and 
admirers in this country. The Imperialists in 
France at once assumed that England was a 
country where assassination of foreign sovereigns 
was encouraged by the population, and not dis- 
couraged by the laws. The French Minister 
for Foreign Affairs, Count Walewski, wrote a 
despatch, in which he asked whether England 
considered that hospitality was due to assassins. 
The Due de Persigny, then Ambassador of 
France in England, made a very foolish and un- 
fortunate reply to a deputation from the Corpo- 
ration of London, in which he took on himself to 
point out that if the law of England was strong 
enough to put down conspiracies for assassination 
it ought to be put in motion, and if it were not, 
it ought to be made stronger. Addresses of con- 
gratulation were poured in upon the Emperor 
from the French army, and many of them were 
full of insulting allusions to England as the 
sheltering-ground of assassination. A semi-offi- 
cial pamphlet, published in Paris, and entitled 
"The Emperor Napoleon the Third and Eng- 
land." actually went the ridiculous length of de- 
scribing an obscure debating club in a Fleet 
Street public-house, where a few dozen honest 
fellows smoked their pipes of a night and talked 
hazy politics, as a formidable political institution 
where regicide was nightly preached to fanatical 
desperadoes. 

Thus we had the public excited on both sides. 
The feeling of anger on this side was intensified 
by the conviction that France was insulting us 
because she thought England was crippled by 
her troubles in India, and had no power to re- 
sent an insult. It was while men here were 
smarting under this sense of wrong that Lord 
Palmerston introduced his famous measure for 
the suppression and punishment of conspiracies 
to murder. The bill was introduced in conse- 
quence of the despatch of Count Walewski. In 
that despatch it was suggested to the English 
Government that they ought to do something to 
strengthen their law. The words were very civil. 
Nor was the request they contained in itself un- 
reasonable. Long afterwards this country had 
to acknowledge, in reply to the demand of the 
United States, that a nation cannot get rid of 
her responsibility to a foreign people by pleading 
that her municipal legislation does not provide 
for this or that emergency. The natural re- 
joinder is, "Then you had better make such a 
law ; you are not to injure us and get off by say- 
ing your laws allow us to be injured.'' But the 
conditions under which the request was made by 
France had put England in the worst possible 
... to it. ( hninoiis questions were 
put to the Government in both Houses of Parlia- 
ment. In the House of Commons Mr. Roebuck 
asked whether any communications b 
between the Governments of England and Fiance 
with respect to the Alien Act or any portion of 
our criminal code. Lord Palmerston answered 
by mentioning Count Walewski's despatch, which 
he said should be laid before the House. He 



44 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



added a few words about the addresses of the 
French regiments, and pleaded that allowance 
should be made for the irritation caused by the 
attempt on the life of the Emperor. He was 
asked a significant question — had the Govern- 
ment sent any answer to Count Walewski's de- 
spatch ? No, was the reply ; her Majesty's Gov- 
ernment had not answered it; not yet. 

Two or three days after Lord Palmerston 
moved for leave to bring in the Conspiracy to 
Murder Bill. The chief object of the measure 
was to make conspiracy to murder a felony in- 
stead of a mere misdemeanor, as it had been 
in England, and to render it liable to penal servi- 
tude for any period varying from five years to a 
whole life. Lord Palmerston made a feeble and 
formal attempt to prove that his bill was intro- 
duced simply as a measure of needed reform in 
our criminal legislation, and without special ref- 
erence to anything that had happened in France. 
The law against conspiracy to murder was very 
light in England, he showed, and was very se- 
vere in Ireland. It was now proposed to make 
the law the same in both countries — that was all. 
Of course no one was deceived by this explana- 
tion. The bill itself was as much of a sham as the 
explanation. Such a measure would not have been 
of any account whatever as regarded the offences 
against which it was particularly directed. Lord 
Palmerston, we may be sure, did not put the 
slightest faith in the efficacy of the piece of leg- 
islation he had undertaken to recommend to 
Parliament. He was compelled to believe that 
the Government would have to do something; 
and he came, after a while, to the conclusion that 
the most harmless measure would be the best. 
Mr. Kinglake moved an amendment, formally 
expressing the sympathy of the House with the 
French people on account of the attempt made 
against the Emperor, but declaring it inexpedient 
to legislate in compliance with the demand made 
in Court Walewski's despatch of January 20, 
" until farther information is before it of the 
communications of the two Governments subse- 
quent to the date of that despatch." Mr. Dis- 
raeli voted for the bringing in of the bill, and 
made a cautious speech, in which he showed him- 
self in favor of some sort of legislation, but did 
not commit himself to approval of that particular 
measure. The bill was read a first time. Two 
hundred and ninety-nine votes were for it ; only 
ninety-nine against. But before it came on for 
a second reading public opinion was beginning 
to declare ominously against it. The fact that 
the Government had not answered the despatch 
of Count Walewski told heavily against them. 
It was afterwards explained that Lord Cowley 
had been instructed to answer it orally, and that 
Lord Palmerston thought this course the more 
prudent, and the more likely to avoid an increase 
of irritation between the two countries. But 
public opinion in England was not now to be 
propitiated by counsels of moderation. The 
idea had gone abroad that Lord Palmerston was 
truckling to the Emperor of the French, and that 
the very right of asylum which England had so 
long afforded to the exiles of all nations was to 
be sacrificed at the bidding of one who had been 
glad to avail himself of it in his hour of need. 

This idea received support from the arrest of 
Dr. Simon Bernard, a French refugee, who was 
immediately put on trial as an accomplice in Or- 
sini's plot. Bernard was a native of the South 
of France, a surgeon by profession, and had lived 
a long time in England. The arrest of Bernard 
may have been a very proper thing, but it came 
iu with most untimely effect upon the Govern- 
ment. It was understood to have been made by 
virtue of information sent over from Paris, and 
no one could have failed to observe that the loos- 
est accusations of that kind were always coming 
from the French capital. Many persons were 
influenced in their belief of Bernard's innocence 
by the fact, which does assuredly count for some- 
thing, that Orsini himself had almost with his 
dying breath declared that Bernard knew noth- 
ing of the intended assassination. Not a few 
made up their minds that he was innocent be- 
cause the French Government accused him of 
guilt; and still more declared that, innocent or 
guilty, he ought not to be arrested by English au- 



thorities at the bidding of a French Emperor. 
The debate was over and all the Conspiracy Bill 
disposed of before the Bernard trial came to an 
end ; but we may anticipate by a few days, and 
finish the Bernard story. Bernard was tried at 
the Central Criminal Court under existing law ; 
lie was defended by Mr. Edwin James, a well- 
known criminal lawyer, and he was acquitted. 
The trial was a practical illustration of the in- 
utility of such special legislation as that which 
Lord Palmerston attempted to introduce. A 
new law of conspiracy could not have furnished 
any new evidence against Bernard, or persuaded 
a jury to convict him on such evidence as there 
was. In the prevailing temper of the public the 
evidence should have been very clear indeed to 
induce an ordinary English jury to convict a 
man like Bernard, and the evidence of his knowl- 
edge of an intended assassination was anything 
but clear. 

In the midst of the commotion caused by 
Bernard's arrest Mr. Milner Gibson quietly gave 
notice of an amendment to the second reading of 
the Conspiracy Bill. The amendment proposed 
to declare that while the House heard with re- 
gret the allegation that the recent crime has 
been devised in England, and was always ready 
to assist in remedying any proved defects in the 
criminal law, "yet it cannot but regret that her 
Majesty's Government, previously to inviting the 
House to amend the law of conspiracy by the 
second reading of this bill at the present time, 
have not felt it to be their duty to make some 
reply to the important despatch received from 
the French Government, dated Paris, January 
20, 1858. and which has been laid before Par- 
liament." It might have been seen at once that 
this was a more serious business for the Govern- 
ment than Mr. Kinglake's amendment. In fore- 
casting the result of a motion in the House of 
Commons much depends on the person who 
brings it forward. Has he a party behind him ? 
If so, then the thing is important. If not, let 
his ability be what it will, his motion is looked 
on as a mere expression of personal opinion, 
interesting, perhaps, but without political conse- 
quence. Mr. Kinglake was emphatically a man 
without a party behind him ; Mr. Gibson was 
emphatically a man of party and of practical 
politics. Mr. Kinglake was a brilliant literary 
man, who had proved little better than a failure 
in the House ; Mr. Gibson was a successful mem- 
ber of Parliament, and nothing else. When the 
debate on the second reading came on it began 
soon to be seen that the condition of things was 
grave for Lord Palmerston. Every hour and 
every speech made it more ominous. Mr. Glad- 
stone spoke eloquently against the Government. 
Mr. Disraeli suddenly discovered that he was 
bound to vote against the second reading, al- 
though he had voted for the first. The Govern- 
ment, he argued, had not yet answered the de- 
spatch as they might have done in the interval, 
and as they had not vindicated the honor of Eng- 
land, the House of Commons could not intrust 
them with the measure they demanded. Lord 
Palmerston saw that, in homely phrase, the game 
was up. He was greatly annoyed ; he lost his 
temper, and did not even try to conceal the fact 
that he had lost it. For a genial and kindly as 
well as a graceful man, it was singular how com- 
pletely Lord Palmerston always lost his good 
manners when he lost his temper. Under the 
influence of sudden anger, luckily a rare influence 
with him, he could be actually vulgar. Lord 
Palmerston, in his reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, 
showed a positive spitefttlness of tone and temper 
very unusual in him, and especially unbecoming 
in a losing man. A statesman may rise as he 
will, but he should fall with dignity. When the 
division was taken it appeared that there were 
215 votes for the second reading, and 234 against 
it. The Government, therefore, were left in a 
minority of 19 ; 146 Conservatives were in the 
majority, and 84 Liberals. Besides these there 
were such of the Peelite party as Sir James Gra- 
ham, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cardwell, and Mr. Sid- 
ney Herbert. Lord Palmerston at once made 
up his mind to resign. His resignation was ac- 
cepted. Not quite a year had passed since the 
general elections sent Lord Palmerston into pow- 



er triumphant over the routed Liberals and the 
prostrate Manchester School. Not quite a year, 
and now, on the motion of one of the lieutenants 
of that, same party returned to their position 
again, Lord Palmerston is ejected from office. 
Palmerston once talked of having his "tit-for-tat 
with John Russell." The Peace party now had 
their tit-for-tat with him. 

Lord Palmerston had the satisfaction before he 
left office of being able to announce the capture 
of Canton. The operations against China had 
been virtually suspended, it will he remembered, 
when the Indian Mutiny broke out. England 
had now got the co-operation of France. France 
had a complaint of long standing against Chins 
on account of the murder of some missionaries, 
for which redress had been asked in vain. 
There was, therefore, an allied attack made upon 
Canton, and of course the city was easily cap- 
tured. Commissioner Yeh himself was taken 
prisoner, not until he had been sought for and 
hunted out in most ignominious fashion. He 
was found at last bidden away in some obscure 
part of a house. He was known by his enormous 
fatness. One of our officers caught hold of him ; 
Yeh tried still to get away. A British seaman 
seized Yeh by his pigtail, twisted the tail several 
times round his hand, and thus made the unfor- 
tunate Chinese dignitary a helpless and ludicrous 
prisoner. When it was convenient to let loose 
Yeh's pigtail he was put on board an English 
man-of-war, and afterwards sent to Calcutta, 
where he died early in the following year. Un- 
less report greatly belied him, he had been ex- 
ceptionally cruel, even for a Chinese official. 
The English and French Envoys, Lord Elgin 
and Baron Gros, succeeded in making a treaty 
with China. By the conditions of the treaty 
England and France were to have ministers at 
the Chinese Court, on certain special occasions 
at least, and China was to be represented in 
London and Paris ; there was to he toleration of 
Christianity in China, and a certain freedom of 
access to Chinese rivers for English and French 
mercantile vessels, and to the interior of China 
for English and French subjects. China was to 
pay the expenses of the war. It was farther 
agreed that the term "barbarian'' was no longer 
to be applied to Europeans in China. There was 
great congratulation in England over this treaty, 
and the prospect it afforded of a lasting peace 
with China. The peace thus procured lasted, 
in fact, exactly a year. 

The Ministry of Lord Derby, whereof Mr. 
Disraeli was leader of the House of Com- 
mons, was not supported by a Parliamentary 
majority, nor could it pretend to great intellect- 
ual and administrative ability. It had in its 
ranks two or three men of statesmanlike capac- 
ity, and a number of respectable persons possess- 
ing abilities about equal to those of any intelli- 
gent business man or county magistrate. Mr. 
Disraeli of course became Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer. Lord Stanley undertook the Colonies; 
Mr. Walpole made a painstaking and conscien- 
tious Home Secretary, as long as he continued 
to hold the office. Lord Malmesbury muddled 
on with Foreign Affairs somehow ; Lord Ellen- 
borough's brilliant eccentric light perplexed for 
a brief space the Indian Department. General 
Peel was Secretary for War, and Mr Henley 
President of the Board of Trade. Lord Naas, 
afterwards Lord Mayo, became Chief Secretary 
for Ireland, and was then supposed to be nothing 
more than a kindly, sweet-tempered man, of 
whom his most admiring friends would never 
have ventured to foreshadow such a destiny as 
that he should succeed to the place Of a Canning 
and an Elgin, and govern the new India to 
which so many anxious eyes were turned. Sir 
John Pakington was made First Lord of the 
Admiralty, because a place of some kind had to 
be found for him, and he was as likely to do 
well at the head of the navy as anywhere else. 
No Conservative Government could be supposed 
to get on without Lord John Manners, and luck- 
ily there was the Department of Public Works 
for him. 

Lord Stanley was regarded as a statesman of 
great and peculiar promise. The party to which 
he belonged were inclined to make him an object 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



45 



of especial pride, because he seemed to have in a 
remarkable degree the very qualities which most 
of their leading members were generally accused 
of wauling. Lord Stanley had a calm, medita- 
tive intellect. He studied politics as one may 
study a science. He understood political econo- 
my. He had travelled much ; not merely mak- 
ing the old-fashioned grand tour, which most of 
the Tory country gentlemen had themselves 
made, but visiting the United States and Canada 
and the Indies, East and West, lie was under- 
stood to know all about, geography and cotton 
and sugar; and he had come up into politics in 
a happy age when the question of Free Trade 
was believed to be settled. Lord Stanley was 
strangely unlike his father in intellect and tem- 
perament. The one man was indeed almost the 
very opposite of the other. Lord Derby was nil 
instinct and passion ; Lord Stanley was all 
method and calctdation. Lord Derby amused 
himself in the intervals of political work by 
translating classic epics and odes ; Lord Stanley 
beguiled an interval of leisure by the reading of 
Blue-books. Lord Derby's eloquence when at 
its worst became fiery nonsense; Lord Stanley's 
sank occasionally to be nothing better than plati- 
tude. The extreme of the one was rhapsody, 
and of the other commonplace. Lord Derby 
was too hot and impulsive to be always a sound 
statesman ; Lord Stanley was too coldly meth- 
odical to be the statesman of a crisis. Both 
men were to a certain sense superficial and de- 
ceptive. Lord Derby's eloquence had no great 
depth in it; and Lord Stanley's wisdom often 
proved somewhat thin. The career of Lord 
Stanley did not afterwards bear out all the ex- 
pectations that were originally formed of him. 
He proved to be methodical, sensible, conscien- 
tious, slow. But at the time when he accepted the 
Indian Secretaryship people on both sides of the 
political contest looked to him as a new and 
great figure in Conservative politics. He was 
not an orator ; he had nothing whatever of the 
orator in language or in temperament. His man- 
ner was ineffective ; his delivery was decidedly 
bad. But his words carried weight with them, 
and even his commonplaces were received by 
some of his party as the utterances of an oracle. 
There were men among the Conservatives on 
the back benches who secretly hoped that in this 
wise young man was the upcoming statesman 
who was to deliver the party from the thraldom 
of eccentric genius, and of an eloquence which, 
however brilliantly it fought their battles, seemed 
to them hardly a respectable sort of gift to be em- 
ployed in the service of gentlemanlike Tory prin- 
ciples. 

The superiority of the Opposition in debating 
power was simply overwhelming. In the House 
of Commons Mr. Disraeli was the only first-class 
debater, with the exception perhaps of the new 
Solicitor-General, Sir Hugh Cairns; and against 
him were Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, 
Mr. Gladstone, Sir James Graham, Mr. Sidney 
Herbert, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, every one 
of them a first -class debater; some of them 
great Parliamentary orators; some, too, with the 
influence that comes from the fact of their hav- 
ing led ministries and conducted wars. In no 
political assembly in the world does experience 
of office and authority tell for more than in the 
House of Commons. To have held office con- 
fers a certain dignity even on mediocrity. The 
man who once held office, and who sits on the 
front bench opposite the ministry, has a sort of 
prescriptive right to be heard whenever he stands 
up to address the House, in preference to the 
most rising and brilliant talker who has never 
yet been a member of an administration. Mr. 
Disraeli well knew that his party held office only 
on sufferance from their opponents. If they at- 
tempted nothing, they were certain to be cen- 
sured for inactivity; if they attempted anything, 
there was the chance of their exposing them- 
selves to the combined attack of all the sections 
of the Liberal party. Luckily for them it was 
not easy to bring about such a combination just 
yet; but whenever it came, there was foreshown 
the end of the ministry. 

Lord Derby's Government quietly dropped the 
unlucky Conspiracy Bill. England and Frunce 



were alike glad to be out of the difficulty. There 
was a short interchange of correspondence, in 
which the French Government explained that 
they really had meant nothing in particular, and 
it was then announced to both Houses of Parlia- 
ment that the misunderstanding was at an end, 
and that friendship had set in again. We have 
seen already how the India Bill was carried. 
Lord Derby's tenure of office was made remark- 
able by the success of one measure which must 
have given much personal satisfaction to Mr. 
Disraeli. The son of a Jewish father, the de- 
scendant of an ancient Jewish race, himself re- 
ceived as a child into the Jewish community, 
Mr. Disraeli had since his earliest years of in- 
telligence been a Christian. But he had never 
renounced his sympathies with the race to which 
he belonged, and tiie faith in which his fathers 
worshipped. He had always stood up for the 
Jews. He had in some of his novels seemingly 
set about to persuade his readers that all of good 
and great the modern world had seen was due to 
the unceasing intellectual activity of the Jewish 
race. 

Mr. Disraeli had the good fortune to sec the 
civil emancipation of the Jews accomplished dur- 
ing the time of his leadership of the House of 
Commons. It was a coincidence merely. He 
had always assisted the movement towards that 
end ; but the success did not come from any 
inspiration of his ; and most of his colleagues in 
power resisted it as long as they could. In July, 
1858, the long political and sectarian struggle 
came to an end when Baron Lionel Nathan de 
Rothschild was allowed to take his seat in the 
House of Commons as one of the representatives 
of the City of London. We have seen how by 
steps the Jews made their way into municipal 
office and into the magistracy. At the same 
time persistent efforts were being made to ob- 
tain for them the right to be elected to the House 
of Commons. On April 5, 1830, Mr. Robert 
Grant, then a colleague of one of the Gurney 
family in the representation of Norwich, moved 
for leave to bring in a bill to allow British-born 
Jews to enjoy all the rights of the British sub- 
ject, without having to profess the religion of 
the State. At that time the Jews were unable 
to take the oath of allegiance, inasmuch as it 
was sworn on the Evangelists. Nor could they 
take the oath of abjuration, intended to guard 
against the return of the Stuarts, because that 
oath contained the words "on the true faith of 
a Christian." 

The debate on Mr. Grant's motion was made 
memorable by the fact that Macaulay delivered 
then his maiden speech. The proposal for the 
admission of Jews to Parliament was supported 
by Lord John Russell, O'Connell, Brougham, and 
Mackintosh. Its first reading — for it was op- 
posed even on the first reading — was carried by 
a majority of eighteen ; but on the motion for 
the second reading the bill was thrown out by a 
majority of sixty-three, the votes for it being 1G5 
and those against it 228. In 1833 Mr. Grant 
introduced bis bill again, and this time was fort- 
unate enough to pass it through the Commons. 
The Lords rejected it by a majority of fifty. 
The following year told a similar story. The 
Commons accepted ; the Lords rejected. Mean- 
time the Jews were being gradually relieved from 
other restrictions. A clause in Lord Deuman's 
Act for amending the laws of evidence allowed 
all persons to be sworn in courts of law in the 
form which they held most binding on their con- 
science. Lord Lyndhurst succeeded in passing 
a bill for the admission of Jews to corporate of- 
fices. Jews had, as we have already seen, been 
admitted to the shrievalty and the magistracy in 
the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign. In 
1848 the struggle for their admission to Parlia- 
ment was renewed, but the Lords still held out 
and would not pass a bill. Meanwhile influen- 
tial Jews began to offer themselves as candidates 
for seats in Parliament. Mr. Salomons contest- 
ed Shoreham and Maidstone successively and 
unsuccessfully. In 1847 Baron Lionel Roths- 
child was elected one of the members for the City 
of London. He resigned his sent when the House 
of Lords threw out the Jews' bill and stood again 
and was again elected. It was not, however, until 



1S50 that the struggle was actually transferred 
to the floor of the House of Commons. In that 
year Baron Rothschild presented himself at the 
table of the House and ottered to take the oaths 
in order that he might be admitted to take his 
seat. For four sessions he had sat as a stranger 
in the House of which he had been duly elected 
a member by the votes of one of the most impor- 
tant English constituencies. Now he came bold- 
ly up to the table and demanded to be sworn. 
He was sworn on the Old Testament. He took 
the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy; but 
when the Oath of Abjuration came he omitted 
from it the words "on the true faith of a Chris- 
tian." He was directed to withdraw, and it was 
decided that he could neither sit nor vote unless 
he would consent to take the oath of abjuration 
in the fashion prescribed by the law. 

Baron Rothschild did not contest the matter 
any farther. Mr. David Salomons was inclined 
for a rougher and bolder course. He was elected 
for Greenwich in 1851, and he presented himself 
as Baron Rothschild laid done. The same thing 
followed; he refused to say the words, "on the 
true faith of a Christian," and he was directed to 
withdraw. He did withdraw. He sat below the 
bar. A few evenings after a question was put to 
the Government by a member friendly to the ad- 
mission of the Jews, Sir Benjamin Hall, after- 
wards Lord Llanover: " If Mr. Salomons should 
take his seat, would the Government sue him for 
the penalties provided by the Act of Parliament, 
in order that the question of right might be tried 
by a court of law?" Lord John Russell replied 
on the part of the Government that they did not 
intend to take any proceedings ; in fact, implied 
that they considered it no affair of theirs. Then 
Sir Benjamin Hall announced that Mr. Salomons 
felt he had no alternative but to take his seat and 
let the question of right be tested in that way. 
Forthwith, to the amazement and horror of 
steady old constitutional members, Mr. Salo- 
mons, who had been sitting below the bar, calm- 
ly got up, walked into the sacred precincts of 
the House, and took his seat amongst the mem- 
bers. A tumultuous scene followed. Half the 
House shouted indignantly to Mr. Salomons to 
" withdraw, withdraw ;" the other half called out 
encouragingly to him to keep his place. The per- 
plexity was indescribable. What is to be done 
with a quiet and respectable gentleman who insists 
that he is a member of Parliament, comes and 
takes his seat in the House, and will not with- 
draw ? Mr. Salomons had undoubtedly been elect- 
ed member for Greenwich by a considerable ma- 
jority. His constituents believed him to be their 
lawful representative, and in fact had obtained 
from him a promise that if elected he would act- 
ually take his seat. Many members were of 
opinion, and eminent lawyers were among them, 
that in the strictest and most technical view of 
the law he was entitled to take bis seat. Many 
more were convinced that the principle which ex- 
cluded him was stupid and barbarous, and that 
the course he was at present taking was necessary 
for the purpose of obtaining its immediate repeal. 

Therefore any idea of expelling Mr. Salomons 
was out of the question. The only thing that 
could be done was to set to work and debate the 
matter. Lord John Russell moved a resolution 
to the effect that Mr. Salomons be ordered to 
withdraw. Lord John Russell, it need hardly be 
said, was entirely in favor of the admission of the 
Jews, but thought Mr. Salomons' course irregu- 
lar. Mr. Bemal Osborne moved an amendment 
I declaring Mr. Salomons entitled to take his seat. 
A series of irregular discussions, varied and en- 
livened by motions for adjournment, took place; 
and Mr. Salomons not only voted in some of the 
divisions, but actually made a speech. He spoke 
calmly and well, and was listened to with great 
attention. He explained that in the course he 
had taken he was acting in no spirit of contuma- 
cy or presumption, and with no disregard for the 
dignity of the House, but that he had been law- 
fully elected, and that he felt bound to take his 
seat for the purpose of asserting his own rights 
and those of his constituents. He intimated also 
that he would withdraw if just sufficient force 
were used to make him feel that he was acting 
under coercion. The motion that he be ordered 



46 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



to withdraw was carried. The Speaker request- 
ed Mr.' Salomons to withdraw. Mr. Salomons 
held his place. The Speaker directed the Ser- 
geant-at-arms to remove Mr. Salomons. The 
Sergeant-at-arms approached Mr. Salomons and 
touched him on the shoulder, and Mr. Salomons 
then quietly withdrew. The farce was over. It 
was evident to every one that Mr. Salomons had 
virtually gained the victory, and that something 
must soon be done to get the House of Commons 
and the country out of the difficulty. 

But the victory was not technically won for 
some time after. An action was brought against 
Mr. Salomons — not by the Government — in De- 
cember, 1851, to recover penalties for his hav- 
ing unlawfully taken his seat. The Court of 
Exchequer decided by three voices to one that 
the words "on the true faith of a Christian" 
must be held in law to constitute a specially 
Christian oath, which could be taken by no one 
but a Christian, and without taking which no 
one could be a member of Parliament. The 
legal question then being settled, there were re- 
newed efforts made to get rid of the disabilities 
by an Act of Parliament. The House of Com- 
mons continued to pass Bills to enable Jews to 
sit in Parliament, and the House of Lords con- 
tinned to throw them out. Lord John Russell, 
who had taken charge of the measure, intro- 
duced his Bill early in 1858. When it came 
up to the House of Lords it suffered the usual 
fate. Then Lord Lucan recommended the in- 
sertion of a clause in the Bill allowing either 
House to modify the form of oath according to 
its pleasure. Lord John Russell objected to 
this way of dealing with a great question, but 
did not feel warranted in refusing the proposed 
compromise. A Bill was drawn up with the 
clause suggested, and it was carried through 
both Houses. A Jew, therefore, might be a 
member of the House of Commons, if it chose 
to receive him, and might be shut out of the 
House of Lords, if that House did not think fit 
to let him in. More than that, the House of 
Commons might change its mind at any mo- 
ment, and by modifying the form of oath shut 
out the Jews again, or shut out any new Jewish 
candidates. Of course such a condition of things 
as that could not endure. An Act passed not 
long after which consolidated the Acts referring 
to Oaths of Allegiance, Abjuration, and Su- 
premacy, -and enabled Jews on all occasions 
whatever to omit the words " on the true faith 
of a Christian." Thus the Jew was at last 
placed on a position of political equality with 
his Christian fellow - subjects, and an anomaly 
and a scandal was removed from our legislation. 

About the same time as that which saw Baron 
Rothschild admitted to take bis seat in the House 
of Commons the absurd property qualification 
for members of Parliament was abolished. This 
ridiculous system originally professed to secure 
that no man should be a member of the House 
of Commons who did not own a certain amount 
of landed property. It had not the slightest 
real force. Fictitious conveyances were issued 
as a matter of course. Any one who desired a 
seat in Parliament could easily find some friend 
or patron who would convey to him by formal 
deed the fictitious ownership of landed property 
enough to satisfy the requirements of the law. 
As usual with Parliament, this anomaly was 
allowed to go on until a sudden scandal made 
its abolition necessary. One luckless person, 
who probably had no position and few friends, 
was actually prosecuted for having made a false 
declaration as to his property qualification. 
This practically settled the matter. Every one 
knew that many other members of Parliament 
deserved, in point of fact, just as well as he the 
three months' imprisonment to which he was 
sentenced. Mr. Locke King introduced a Bill 
to abolish the property qualification hitherto 
required from the representatives of English 
and Irish constituencies, and it became law in 
a few days. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

disraeli's first reform enterprise. 
When Lord Ellenborough abruptly resigned 
the place of President of the Board of Control 



he was succeeded by Lord Stanley, who, as we 
have seen already, became Secretary of State for 
India under the new system of government. 
Lord Stanley had been Secretary for the Colo- 
nies, and in this office he was succeeded by Sir 
Edward Bulwer Lytton. For some time pre- 
viously Sir Edward Lytton had been taking so 
marked a place in Parliamentary life as to make 
it evident that when his party came into power 
he was sure to have a chance of distinguishing 
himself in office. His political career had up to 
this time been little better than a failure. He 
started in public life as a Radical and a friend 
of O'Connell ; he was indeed the means of in- 
troducing Mr. Disraeli to the leader of the Irish 
party. He began his Parliamentary career be- 
fore the Reform Bill. He was elected for St. 
Ives in 1831. After the passing of the Bill he 
represented Lincoln for several years. At the 
general election of 1S41 he lost his seat, and it 
was not until July, 1852, that he was again re- 
turned to Parliament. This time he came in as 
member for the county of Herts. In the interval 
Lytton had succeeded to wealth and to landed 
estates, and he had almost altogether changed 
his political opinions. From a poetic Radical 
he had become a poetic Conservative. It was 
certain that whatever Lytton attempted he would 
in the end carry to some considerable success. 
His first years in the House of Commons had 
come to nothing. When he lost his seat most 
people fancied that he had accepted defeat, and 
had turned his back on Parliamentary life for- 
ever. But Lytton possessed a marvellously strong 
will, and had a faith in himself which almost 
amounted to genius. He seems to have made 
up his mind that he would compel the world to 
confess him capable of playing the part of a 
politician. He was deaf, and his articulation 
was so defective that most persons who heard 
him speak in public for the first time found them- 
selves unable to understand him. Such difficul- 
ties would assuredly have scared any ordinary 
man out of the Parliamentary arena forever. 
But Lytton seems to have determined that he 
would make a figure in Parliament. He set 
himself to public speaking as coolly as if he were 
a man, like Gladstone or Bright, whom Nature 
had marked out for such a competition by her 
physical gifts. He became a decided, and even, 
in a certain sense, a great success. He could 
not strike into a debate actually going on ; his 
defects of hearing shut him off from such a per- 
formance ; and no man who is not a debater 
will ever hold a really high position in the 
House of Commons. But he could review a 
previous night's argument in a speech abound- 
ing in splendid phrases and brilliant illustra- 
tions. He could pass for an orator. He actual- 
ly did pass for an orator. 

Sir Edward Lytton, as Secretary of the Colo- 
nies, seemed resolved to prove by active and 
original work that he could be a practical colo- 
nial statesman as well as a novelist, a playwright, 
and a Parliamentary orator. He founded the 
Colony of British Columbia. He sent Mr. Glad- 
stone on a mission to the Ionian Islands. There 
had long been dissatisfaction and even disturb- 
ance in the Ionian Islands. These seven islands 
were constituted a sort of republic or common- 
wealth by the Treaty of Vienna. But they were 
consigned to the Protectorate of Great Britain, 
which had the right of maintaining garrisons in 
them. It seems almost a waste of words to say 
that the islanders were not content with British 
government. For good or ill the Hellenes where- 
ever they are found are sure to be filled with an 
impassioned longing for Hellenic independence. 
The people of the Ionian Islands were eager to 
be allowed to enter into one system with the 
kingdom of Greece. Their national principles 
and aspirations, their personal vanities, their truly 
Greek restlessness and craving for novelty, all 
combined to make them impatient of that foreign 
protectorate which was really foreign govern- 
ment. Many English public men, however, were 
merely angry with these pestilential Greeks who 
did not know what was good for them. Sir Ed- 
ward Bulwer Lytton had not been long enough 
in office to have become soaked in the ideas of 
routine. He thought the causes of the com- 



plaints and the dissatisfaction were well worth 
looking into. He offered, therefore, to Mr. Glad- 
stone the office of Lord High Commissioner 
Extraordinary to the Ionian Islands, and Mr. 
Gladstone, who had been for some years out of 
office, acting as an independent supporter of 
Lord Palmerston's Government, accepted the 
offer and its duties. The appointment created 
much surprise, some anger, and a good deal of 
ridicule at home. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton 
had alluded in his despatch to Mr. Gladstone's 
Homeric scholarship, and this was, in the opin- 
ion of some politicians, an outrage upon all the 
principles and proprieties of routine. This, it 
was muttered, is what comes of literary men in 
office. A writer of novels is leader of the House 
of Commons, and he has another writer of novels 
at his side as Colonial Secretary, and between 
them they can think of nothing better than to 
send a man out to the Ionian Islands to listen to 
the trash of Greek demagogues, merely because 
he happens to be fond of reading Homer. 

Mr. Gladstone went out to the Ionian Islands, 
and arrived at Corfu in November of 1858. He 
called together the Senate, and explained that 
he had not come there to discuss the propriety 
of maintaining the English protectorate, but only 
to inquire into the manner in which the just 
claims of the Ionian Islands might be secured by 
means of that protectorate. The population of 
the islands, however, persisted in regarding him, 
not as the commissioner of a Conservative English 
Government, but as "Gladstone thePhilhellene." 
In vain he repeated his assurances that he came 
to reconcile the island? to the protectorate, and 
not to deliver them from it. The popular in- 
stinct insisted on regarding him as at least the 
precursor of their union to the kingdom of 
Greece. The National Assembly passed a formal 
resolution declaring for union with Greece. All 
that Mr. Gladstone's persuasion could do was to 
induce them to appoint a committee, and draw up 
a memorial to be presented in proper form to the 
protecting Powers. In England Mr. Gladstone 
was attacked in an absurd manner. He was ac- 
cused not merely of having encouraged the pre- 
tensions of the Ionian Islanders, but even talked 
of as if be, and he alone, had been their inspira- 
tion. National complacency could hardly push 
sensible men to greater foolishness than it did 
when it set half England wondering and raging 
over the impertinence of a Greek population who 
preferred union with a Greek kingdom to depend- 
ence upon an English protectorate. There can 
be no doubt that the people of the islands had 
under England's protectorate admirable means 
of communication by land and sea, splendid 
harbors, regular lines of steamers, excellent roads 
everywhere, while the people of the kingdom of 
Greece were hardly better off for all these ad- 
vantages under Otho than they might have been 
under Codrus. But the populations of the islands 
persevered in the belief that they understood 
better what made them happy than any one else 
could do. They agitated more strenuously than 
ever for annexation to the kingdom of Greece. 
A few years after their wish was granted. The 
Greeks got rid quietly of their heavy German 
King Otho, and on the advice chiefly of England 
they elected as sovereign a brother of the Princess 
of Wales, the second son of the King of Den- 
mark. Then Lord John Russell, on behalf of 
the English Government, handed over the Ionian 
islands to the kingdom of Greece. 

The year that followed Mr. Gladstone's mission 
to the Ionian islands (1859) was one of storm 
and stress on the European continent. It began 
with the memorable declaration of the Emperor 
of the French to the Austrian Ambassador at 
the Tuileries, that the relations between the two 
Empires were not such as he could desire. In 
fact, Count Cavour had had his way. He had 
prevailed upon Louis Napoleon to expel the Aus- 
trians from Italy. In the career of Count Cavour 
our times have seen perhaps the most remark- 
able illustration of that great Italian statesman- 
ship which has always appeared at intervals in 
the history of Europe. Louis Napoleon was 
simply a weapon in the hands of such a man. 
When once the French Emperor had entered 
into a compact with him there was no escape 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



it 



from it. Cavour did not look like an Italian, 
at least a typical Italian. He looked more like 
an Englishman. He reminded Englishman, odd- 
ly, of Dickens's Pickwick, wilh his large forehead, 
his general look of moony good-nature, and his 
spectacles. That commonplace, homely exterior 
concealed unsurpassed force of character, subtlety 
of scheming, and power of will. Cavour had 
determined that France should fight Austria. 
The war was over, one might say, in a moment. 
Austria had no generals, the French army rushed 
to success ; and then Louis Napoleon stopped 
short as suddenly as he had begun. He had 
proclaimed that he went to war to set Italy free 
from the Alps to the tea ; but he made peace on 
the basis of the liberation of Lombardy from 
Austrian rule, and lie left Venetia for another 
day and for other arms. He drew back before 
the very serious danger that threatened on the 
part of the German States, who showed ominous 
indications of a resolve to make the cause of 
Austria their own if France went too far. He 
held his band from Venetia because of Prussia ; 
seven years later Prussia herself gave Venetia to 
Italy. 

The English Government had made futile 
attempts to prevent the outbreak of war. Mean- 
while the Conservative Government could not 
exactly live on the mere reputation of having 
given good advice abroad to which no one would 
listen, and they determined to try their hand at 
a Reform Bill. Mr. Disraeli, as leader of the 
House of Commons, knew that a Reform Bill 
was one of the certainties of the future, and that 
whenever Lord John Russell happened to be in 
power again he would return to his first love in 
politics, a Reform Bill. He knew also that a 
refusal to have anything to do with reform would 
always expose the Tories in office to a coalition 
of all the Liberal factions against them. Mr. 
Disraeli had to choose between two dangers. 
He might risk all by refusing reform ; he might 
risk all by attempting reform. He thought, on 
the whole, the wiser course would be to endeavor 
to take possession of the Reform question for 
himself and his party. The reappearance of Mr. 
Bright in politics stimulated, no doubt, this re- 
solve on the part of Mr. Disraeli. It is not likely 
that the Prime-minister, Lord Derby, took any 
active interest in the matter. Lord Derby had 
outlived political ambition, or he had had per- 
haps all the political success he cared for. He 
had station of the highest; he had wealth and 
influence; he had fame as a great Parliamen- 
tary debater. Now that Brougham had ceased to 
take any leading part in debate he had no rival 
in the House of Lords. He was a sincere man 
without any pretence ; and, if he did not himself 
care about reform, he was not likely to put on 
any appearance of enthusiasm about it. Nor 
did he set much store on continuing in office. 
He would be the same Lord Derby out of office 
as in. But this way of looking at things was by 
no means suitable to bis energetic and ambitious 
lieutenant. Mr. Disraeli had not nearly attained 
the height of his ambition, nor had he by any 
means exhausted his political energies. Mr. 
Disraeli, therefore, was not a man to view with 
any satisfaction the consequences likely to come 
to the Conservative party from an open refusal 
to take up the cause of reform. At a time too 
when must of the Conservatives, and not a few 
of the Whigs, regarded Mr. Bright as only an 
eloquent and respectable demagogue, Mr. Disraeli 
bad made up his mind that the Lancashire orator 
was a man of genius and foresight, who must be 
taken account of as a genuine political power. 
Mr. Bright had for a long time been withdrawn 
by ill-health from all share in political agitation 
or politics of any kind. He now returned to 
public life. He flung himself into a new agita- 
tion fur reform, and he was induced to draw up 
a Reform Bill of his own. It was practically a 
proposal to establish a franchise precisely like 
that which we have now, ballot and all, only that 
it threw the expenses of the returning officer on 
the county or borough rate, and introduced a 
somewhat large measure of redistribution of seats. 
Mr. Disraeli knew well enough that the upper 
and middle classes cared very little about a new 
Reform Bill. But it was evident that any po- 



litical party could appeal to the support of the 
working-classes throughout the country in favor 
of any movement which promised reform. In 
short, Mr. Disraeli knew that reform bad to come 
some time, and be was resolved to make his own 
game if he could. This time, however, he was 
not successful. The difficulties in his way were 
too great. It would have been impossible for 
him to introduce such a Reform Bill as Mr. Bright 
would be likely to accept. His own party would 
not endure such a proposition. Mr. Disraeli's 
Reform Bill was a curiosity. It offered a variety 
of little innovations which nobody wanted or 
could have cared about, and it left out of sight 
altogether the one reform which alone gave an 
excuse for any legislation. Lord Grey's Reform 
Bill admitted the middle-class to legislation, but 
left the working-class out. What was now wanted 
was a measure to let the working-class in. Yet 
Mr. Disraeli's scheme made no more account of 
the working-class as a whole than if they already 
possessed the vote — every man of them. The 
English working-classes cried out for the fran- 
chise, and Mr. Disraeli proposed to answer the 
cry by giving the vote to graduates of universi- 
ties, medical practitioners, and school-masters. 

Yet we may judge of the difficulties Mr. Dis- 
raeli had to deal with by the reception which 
even this poor little measure met with from some 
of his own colleagues. Mr. Walpole and Mr. 
Henley resigned office rather than have anything 
to do with it. Mr. Henley was a specimen of 
the class who might have been described as fine 
old English gentlemen. He was shrewd, blunt, 
and honest, given to broad jokes and to a high- 
flavored, old-fashioned school of humor. Mr. 
Walpole was a man of gentle bearing, not by any 
means a robust politician, nor liberally endowed 
with intellect or eloquence, but pure-minded and 
upright enough to satisfy the most exacting. It 
did not appear to him honorable to support a 
measure because it had been taken up by one's 
own party, which the party would assuredly have 
denounced and opposed to the uttermost if it had 
been brought forward by the other side. Public 
opinion admired Mr. Walpole, and applauded his 
decision. Public opinion would have pronounced 
even more strongly in his favor had it known 
that at the time of his making this decision and 
withdrawing from a high official position Mr. 
Walpole was in circumstances which made the 
possession of a salary of the utmost importance 
to him. Had he even swallowed his scruples and 
held on a little longer, he would have become en- 
titled to a pension. He did not appear to have 
hesitated a moment. He was a high-minded 
gentleman ; he could very well bear to be poor; 
he could' not bear to surrender his self-respect. 

Mr. Disraeli's ingenious Reform Bill was found 
out in a moment. Some one described its en- 
franchising clauses as " fancy franchises." Mr. 
Bright introduced the phrase to the House of 
Commons, and the clauses never recovered the 
epithet. It would be useless to go into any of 
the discussions which took place on this extraor- 
dinary Bill. It can hardly be said to have been 
considered seriously. It had to be got rid of 
somehow, and therefore Lord John Russell moved 
an amendment, declaring that no, readjustment 
of the franchise would satisfy the House of Com- 
mons or the country which did not provide for a 
greater extension of the suffrage in cities and 
boroughs than was contemplated in the Govern- 
ment measure. 

Lord John Russell's resolution was carried by 
330 votes against 291, or a majority of 39. The 
Government dissolved Parliament, and appealed 
to the country. The elections took place during 
the most critical moments of the war between 
France and Austria. While such news was ar- 
riving as that of the defeat of Magenta, the de- 
feat of Solferino, the entrance of the Emperor 
of the French and the King of Sardinia into Mi- 
lan, it was not likely that domestic news of a 
purely parliamentary interest could occupy all 
the attention of Englishmen. To many the 
strength of the Austrian military system had 
seemed the great bulwark of Conservatism in 
Europe ; and now that was gone, shrivelled like 
a straw in fire, shattered like a potsherd. In 
such a condition of things the general election 



passed over hardly noticed. When it was over it 
was found that the Conservatives had gained, in- 
deed, but had not gained nearly enough to enable 
them to hold office, unless by the toleration of 
their rivals. The rivals soon made up their minds 
that they had tolerated them long enough. A 
meeting of the Liberal party was held at Willis's 
Rooms to arrange on some plan of united action. 
Lord Palmerston represented one section of the 
party, Lord John Russell another. Mr. Sidney 
Herbert spoke for the Peelites. Not a few per- 
sons were surprised to find Mr. Bright among 
the speakers. It was well known that be liked 
Lord Palmerston little ; that it could hardly be 
said he liked the Tories any less. But Mr. 
Bright was for a Reform Bill, from whomsoever 
it should come ; and he thought, perhaps, that 
the Liberal chiefs had learned a lessen. The 
party contrived to agree upon a principle of ac- 
tion, and a compact was entered into, the effect 
of which was soon made clear at the meeting of 
the new Parliament. A vote of want of confi- 
dence was at once moved by the Marquis of 
Hartington, eldest son of the Duke of Devon- 
shire, and even then marked out by common re- 
port as a future leader of the Liberal party. 
Lord Hartington had sat but a short time in the 
House of Commons, and he did not then, nor for 
many years afterward, show any greater capacity 
for politics than is shown by an ordinary county 
member. Nothing could more effectively illus- 
trate one of the peculiarities of the English po- 
litical system than the choice of the Marquis of 
Hartington as the figurehead of this important 
movement against the Tory Government. He 
was put up to move the vote of want of confi- 
dence as the heir of the great Whig house of 
Devonshire ; his appearance in the debate would 
have carried just as much significance with it if 
he had simply moved his resolution without an 
accompanying word. The debate that followed 
was long and bitter. It was enlivened by more 
than even the usual amount of personalities. 
Mr. Disraeli and Sir James Graham had a 
sharp passage of arms, in the course of which 
Sir James Graham used an expression that has 
been often quoted since. He described Mr. 
Disraeli as "the Red Indian of debate," who, 
"by the use of the tomahawk, had cut his way 
to power, and by recurrence to the scalping sys- 
tem hopes to prevent the loss of it. " The scalp- 
ing system, however, did not succeed this time. 
The division, when it came on after three nights 
of discussion, showed a majority of 13 in favor 
of Lord Hartington's motion. 

The Queen invited Lord Granville to form a 
Ministry. Lord Granville was still a young 
man to be Prime -minister, considering how 
much the habits of Parliamentary life had 
changed since the days of Pitt. He was not 
much over forty years of age. He had filled 
many ministerial offices, however, and had an 
experience in Parliament which may be said to 
have begun with his majority. After some nine 
years spent in the House of Commons, the death 
of his father called him in 184b' to the House of 
Lords. He made no assumption of command- 
ing abilities, nor had he any pretence to the 
higher class of eloquence or statesmanship. But 
he was a thorough man of the world and of Par- 
liament ; he understood English ways of feeling 
and of acting ; he was a clever debater, and had 
the genial art — very useful and very rare in Eng- 
lish public life — of keeping even antagonists in 
good humor. The Queen had naturally thought, 
in the first instance, of Lord Palmerston and 
Lord John Russell ; but she found it " a very 
invidious and unwelcome task" to make a choice 
between the two statesmen. Her Majesty, there- 
fore, thought a compromise might be best got at 
if both could be united under the guidance of 
Lord Granville, the acknowledged leader of the 
Liberal party in the House of Lords. The at- 
tempt was not successful. Lord John Russell 
declined to serve under Lord Granville, but de- 
clared himself perfectly willing to serve under 
Lord Palmerston. This declaration at once put 
an end to Lord Granville's chances, and to the 
whole difficulty which had been anticipated. 
Lord Granville was not in the slightest degree 
impatient to become Prime-minister, and indeed 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



probably felt relieved from a very unwelcome re- 
sponsibility when he was allowed to accept office 
under the premiership of Lord Palmerston. 
Lord Palmerston was now Prime-minister for 
life. Until his death he held the office with the 
full approval of Conservatives as well as Liber- 
als ; nay, indeed, with much warmer approbation 
from the majority of the Conservatives than from 
many of the Liberals. 

Palmerston formed a strong Ministry. Mr. 
Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer ; 
Lord John Russell had the office of Foreign 
Secretary; Sir G. C.Lewis was Home Secre- 
tary; Mr. Sidney Herbert, Minister for War. 
The Duke of Newcastle took charge of the Colo- 
nies, Mr. Cardwell accepted the Irish Secretary- 
ship, and Sir Charles Wood was Secretary for 
India. Lojd Palmerston endeavored to propi- 
tiate the Manchester Liberals by offering a seat 
in the Government to Mr. Cobden and to Mr. 
Milner Gibson. Mr. Cobden was at the time 
on his way home from the United States. In 
his absence he had been elected member for 
Rochdale ; and in his absence, too, the office of 
President of the Board of Trade in the new 
Ministry had been put at his disposal. His 
friends eagerly awaited his return, and when 
the steamer bringing him home was near Liv- 
erpool a number of them went out to meet him 
before his landing. They boarded the steamer, 
and astonished him with the news that the 
Tories were out, that the Liberals were in, that 
he was member for Rochdale, and that Lord 
Palmerston had offered him a place in the new 
Ministry. Cobden took the news which related 
to himself with his usual quiet modesty. He 
explained afterwards that the office put at his 
disposal was exactly that which would have best 
suited him, and in which he thought that he 
could do some good. He also declared frankly 
that the salary attached to the office would be a 
consideration of much importance to him. At 
the moment he was a poor man. Yet he did 
not in his own mind hesitate an instant about 
Lord Palmerston's offer. He disapproved of 
Palmerston's foreign policy, of his military ex- 
penditure, and his love of interfering in the dis- 
putes of the Continent; and he felt that he could 
not conscientiously accept office under such a 
leader. He refused the offer decisively, and the 
chief promoter of the repeal of the corn laws 
never held any place in an English Administra- 
tion. Cobden, however, advised his friend, Mr. 
Milner Gibson, to avail himself of Lord Palmer- 
ston's offer, and Mr. Gibson, who had never stood 
out before the country in so conspicuous a posi- 
tion as an opponent of Lord Palmerston, acted 
on the advice. 

Lord Palmerston had not made any tender of 
office to Mr. Bright; and he wrote to Mr. 
Bright frankly explaining his reasons. Mr. 
Bright had been speaking out too strongly, dur- 
ing his recent reform campaign, to make his 
presence in the Cabinet acceptable to some of 
the Whig magnates for whom seats had to be 
found. It is curious to notice now the convic- 
tion, which at that time seemed to be universal, 
that Mr. Cobden was a much more moderate 
reformer than Mr. Bright. The impression was 
altogether wrong. There was, in Mr. Bright's 
nature, a certain element of Conservatism which 
showed itself clearly enough the moment the 
particular reforms which he thought necessary 
were carried ; Mr. Cobden would have gone on 
advancing in the direction of reform as long as 
he lived. Not much difference, to be sure, was 
ever to be noticed between them in public affairs. 
But where there was any difference, even of spec- 
ulative opinion, Mr. Cobden went farther than 
Mr. Bright along the path of Eadicalism. 

The closing days of the year were made mem- 
orable by the death of Macaulay. He had been 
raised to the peerage, and had had some hopes 
of being able to take occasional part in the state- 
ly debates of the House of the Lords. But his 
health almost suddenly broke down, and his 
voice was never heard in the Upper Chamber. 
He died prematurely, having only entered on his 
sixtieth year, Macaulay had had, as he often 
said himself, a singularly happy life, although it 
was not without its severe losses and its griefs. 



His career was one of uninterrupted suacess. 
His books brought him fame, influence, social 
position, and wealth, all at once. He never made 
a failure. The world only applauded one book 
more than the other, the second speech more than 
the first. Macaulay the essayist, Macaulay the 
historian, Macaulay the ballad-writer, Macaulay 
the Parliamentary orator, Macaulay the brilliant, 
inexhaustible talker — he was alike, it might ap- 
pear, supreme in everything he chose to do or to 
attempt. Macaulay was undoubtedly a great 
literary man. He was also a man of singularly 
noble character. He appears to have enjoyed 
advancement, success, fame, and money only be- 
cause these enabled him to give pleasure and 
support to the members of his family. He was 
attached to his family, especially to his sisters, 
with the tenderest affection. His real nature 
seems only to have thoroughly shone out when 
in their society. There he was loving, sportive 
even to joyous frolicsomeness ; a glad school- 
boy almost to the very end. He was remarkably 
generous and charitable even to strangers; his 
hand was almost always open ; but he gave so 
unostentatiously that it was not until after his 
death that half his kindly deeds became known. 
He had a spirit which was absolutely above any 
of the corrupting temptations of money or rank. 
He was very poor at one time, but it did not 
seem to have occurred to him, when he was poor, 
that money was lacking to the dignity of his in- 
tellect and his manhood; or when he was rich 
that money added to it. He had certain defects 
of temper and manner rather than of character. 
He was apt to be overbearing in tone, and to 
show himself a little too confident of his splendid 
gifts and acquirements : his marvellous memory, 
his varied reading, his overwhelming power of 
argument. He trampled on men's prejudices 
too heedlessly, was inclined to treat ignorance 
as if it were a crime, and to make dulness feel 
that it had cause to be ashamed of itself. These 
defects only are worth mentioning as they serve 
to explain some of the misconceptions which were 
formed of Macaulay by many during his lifetime, 
and some of the antagonisms which he uncon- 
sciously created. Absolutely without literary 
affectation, undepressed by early poverty, un- 
spoiled by later and almost unequalled success, 
he was an independent, quiet, self-relying man, 
who, in all his noon of fame, found most happi- 
ness in the companionship and the sympathy of 
those he loved, and who, from first to last, was 
loved most tenderly by those who knew him best. 
He was buried in Westminster Abbey in the first 
week of the new year, and there truly took his 
place among his peers. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

LOKD PALMERSTON AGAIN. 

When Lord Palmerston's Ministry came into 
power a profound distrust of Louis Napoleon pre- 
vailed almost everywhere. The fact that he had 
been recently our ally did not do much to dimin- 
ish this distrust. On the contrary, it helped in 
a certain sense to increase it. It was to have 
his revenge for Moscow and the Beresina, peo- 
ple said, that he struck at Russia: and he made 
us his mere tools in the enterprise. Now he 
turns upon Austria, to make her atone for other 
wrongs done against the ambition of the Bona- 
partes ; and he has conquered. What next ? 
Prussia perhaps — or England? 

The invasion panic sprang up again here in a 
moment. The volunteer forces began to increase 
in numbers and in ardor. Plans of coast forti- 
fication and of national defences generally were 
thrust upon Parliament from various quarters. 
A feverish anxiety about the security of the isl- 
and took possession of many minds that were 
usually tranquil and shrewd enough. The ven- 
erable Lord Lyndhurst devoted himself to the 
work of inflaming the public spirit of England 
against Louis Napoleon with a vigor of manner 
and a literary freshness of style well worthy of 
his earlier and best years. Up to this time there 
was no evidence in the public opinion of England 
of any sympathy with Italian independence such 
as became the fashion a year later. The King 
of Sardinia, Victor Emanuel, had visited Eng- 



land not long before, and had been received with 
public addresses and other such demonstrations 
of admiration here and there; but he had not 
succeeded in securing the general sympathy of 
the English public. 

The Ministry attempted great things. They 
undertook a complete remodelling of the Cus- 
toms system, a repeal of the paper duties, and a 
Reform Bill. The news that a commercial 
treaty with France was in preparation broke on 
the world somewhat abruptly in the early davs 
of 1860. The arrangement was made in a man- 
ner to set old formalism everywhere shaking its 
solemn head and holding up its alarmed hands. 
The French treaty was made without any direct 
assistance from professional diplomacy. It was 
made indeed in spite of professional diplomacy. 
It was the result of private conversations and an 
infoimal agreement between the Emperor of the 
French and Mr. Cobden. Although Mr. Cobden 
had never held official position of any kind in 
England, the Emperor received him very cordial- 
ly and entered readily into his ideas on' the sub- 
ject of a treaty between England and France, 
which should remove many of the prohibitions 
and restrictions then interfering with a liberal 
interchange of the productions of the two na- 
tions. Napoleon the Third was a free-trader, or 
something nearly approaching to it. His cousin, 
Prince Napoleon, was still more advanced and 
more decided in his views of political economy. 
The Emperor was, moreover, a good deal under 
the influence of the distinguished French econo- 
mist Michel Chevalier. Mr. Cobden had the as- 
sistance of all the influence Mr. Gladstone could 
bring to bear. It is not likely that Lord Palmer- 
ston cared much about the French treaty proj- 
ect, but at least he did not oppose it. There 
were many difficulties in the way on both sides. 
The French people and the French manufactur- 
ing bodies were for the most part opposed to the 
principles of free trade. So were some of the 
most influential politicians of the country. M. 
Thiers was an almost impassioned Protectionist. 
The Emperor of the French had to enter into the 
engagement by virtue of his imperial will and 
power, and a strong objection was felt in this 
country just then to any friendly negotiation or 
arrangement whatever with Louis Napoleon. 
As soon as it became known that the treaty was 
in course of negotiation a storm of indignation 
broke out in this country. Not only the Conserv- 
ative party but a large portion of the Liberals 
condemned and denounced the proposed agree- 
ment, but the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone and 
the strength of the Government prevailed against 
them all. The effect of the treaty, so far as 
France was concerned, was an engagement virtu- 
ally to remove all prohibitory duties on all the 
staples of British manufacture, and to reduce 
the duties on English coal and coke, bar and pig 
iron, tools, machinery, yarns, flax, and hemp. 
England, for her part, proposed to sweep away 
all duties on manufactured goods, and to reduce 
greatly the duties on foreign wines. 

Mr. Gladstone not only succeeded in carrying 
this part of his Budget, but he carried, too, as 
far as the House of Commons was concerned, 
his important measure for the abolition of the 
duty on paper. The stamp duty was originally 
imposed with the object of checking the growth 
of seditious newspapers. It was reduced, in- 
creased, reduced again, and increased again, un- 
til in the early part of the century it stood at 
fourpence on each copy of a newspaper issued. 
In 1836 it was brought down to the penny, rep- 
resented by a red stamp on every paper. There 
was besides this a considerable duty — sixpence, 
or some suoh sum — on every advertisement in a 
newspaper. Finally, there was the heavy duty 
on the paper material itself. The consequence 
was that a newspaper was a costly thing. Its pos- 
session was the luxury of the rich ; those who 
could afford less had to be content with an oc- 
casional read of a paper. It was common for a 
number of persons to club together and take in a 
paper, which they read by turns, the general un- 
; derstanding being that he whose turn came last 
remained the owner of the journal. It was con- 
' sidered a fair compensation for his late reception 
: of the news that lie should come iuto the full 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



49 



proprietorship of tlie precious newspaper. The 
price of a daily paper then was uniformly six- 
pence ; and no sixpenny paper contained any- 
thing like the news, or went to a tenth of the dai- 
ly expense, which is supplied in the one case and 
undertaken in the other by the penny papers of 
our day. Gradually the burdens on journalism 
and on the leading public were reduced. The 
advertisement duty was abolished ; in 1855 the 
stamp duty was abolished ; that is to say, the 
stamp was either removed altogether, or was al- 
lowed to stand as postage. On the strength of 
this reform many new and cheap journals were 
started. But it became painfully evident that a 
newspaper could not bo sold profitably for a pen- 
ny while the duty on the paper-material remained. 
A powerful agitation was set on foot for its re- 
moval, not on behalf of the interests of newspa- 
per speculation, but on behalf of the reading pub- 
lic and of the education of the people. 

Mr. Gladstone undertook the congenial task 
of abolishing the duty on paper. He was met 
with strong opposition from both sides of the 
House. The paper manufacturers made it at 
once a question of protection to their own trade. 
Vested interests in the newspaper business itself 
also opposed Mr. Gladstone. The high-priced 
and well-established journals did not by any 
means relish the idea of cheap and unfettered 
competition. A good many men were induced 
to sustain the cause of the paper-making and 
journal-selling monopoly. The result was that 
although Mr. Gladstone carried his resolutions 
for the abolition of the excise on paper, he only 
carried them by dwindling majorities. The sec- 
ond reading was carried by a majority of 53; 
the third by a majority of only 9. The effect 
of this was to encourage some members of the 
House of Lords to attempt the task of getting 
rid of Mr. Gladstone's proposed reform altogeth- 
er. An amendment to reject the resolutions re- 
pealing the tax was proposed by Lord Monteagle, 
and received the support of Lord Derby and of 
Lord Lyndhurst. Lord Lyndhurst was then just 
entering on his eighty-ninth year. His growing 
infirmities made it necessary that a temporary 
railing should be constructed in front of his seat, 
in order that he might lean on it and be support- 
ed. But although his physical strength thus 
needed support bis speech gave no evidence of 
failing intellect. Even his voice could hardly be 
said to have lost any of its clear, light, musical 
strength. The question which the House of 
Lords had to face was somewdiat serious. The 
Commons had repealed a tax ; was it constitu- 
tionally in the power of the House of Lords to 
reimpose it? Was not this, it was asked, sim- 
ply to assert for the House of Lords a taxing 
power equal to that of the Commons? Was it 
not to reduce to nothing the principle that tax- 
ation and representation go together? Lord 
Lyndhurst entered into a long and a very telling 
argument to show that although the peers had 
abandoned their claim to alter a money bill, they 
had still a right to refuse their assent to a repeal 
of taxation, and that in this particular instance 
they were justified in doing so. The Conserva- 
tive party in the House of Lords can always car- 
ry any division, and they were resolved to show 
that they could do something. The House of 
Lords was in an unusually aggressive mood. 
Mr. Disraeli in one of his novels had irreverent- 
ly said of the Lords, that when the peers ac- 
complish a division they cackle as if they had 
laid an egg. On this occasion they were deter- 
mined to have a division. The majority against 
the Government was overwhelming, and the re- 
peal of the excise duty on paper was done with 
for that session. 

Lord Palmerston promptly moved in the House 
of Commons for a committee to ascertain and 
report on the practice of each House with regard 
to the several descriptions of Bills imposing or 
repealing taxes. After two months the commit- 
tee found by a majority of fourteen a series of 
resolutions to the effect that the privilege of the 
House of Commons did not extend so far as to 
make it actually unconstitutional for the Lords 
to reject a Bill for the repeal of a tax. Mr. 
Bright, who was a member of the committee, did 
not assent to this principle. He prepared a draft 



report of his own in which he contended for the 
very reasonable view, that if the Lords might 
prolong or reimpose a tax by refusing their assent 
to its repeal when that repeal had been voted hy 
the House of Commons, the House of Commons 
could not be said to have absolute control over 
the taxation of the country. The truth is, that 
if the majority of the House of Commons in favor 
of the repeal of the paper duties had been any- 
thing considerable, the House of Lords would 
never have ventured to interfere. Not a few of 
the peers felt convinced that the majority of the 
House of Commons would secretly bless them for 
their intervention. Lord Palmerston followed 
up the report of the committee by proposing a 
series of resolutions to reaffirm the position and 
the claims of the House of Commons in regard 
to questions of taxation. Such resolutions were 
not likely to satisfy the more impatient among 
the Liberals. An appeal was made to the people 
generally to thunder a national protest against 
the House of Lords. But the country did not, it 
must be owned, respond very tmnultuously to the 
invitation. Great public meetings were held in 
London and the large towns of the North, and 
much anger was expressed at the conduct of the 
Lords. Mr. Bright threw his eloquence and 
his influence into the agitation, and Mr. Glad- 
stone expressed himself strongly in favor of its 
object. Vet the country did not become greatly 
excited over the controversy. It did not even 
enter warmly into the question as to the necessity 
of abolishing the House of Lords. One indignant 
writer insisted that if the Lords did not give way 
the English people would turn them out of West- 
minster Palace, and strew the Thames with the 
wrecks of their painted chamber. Language 
such as this sounded oddly out of tune with the 
temper of the time. The general conviction of 
the country was undoubtedly that the Lords had 
made a mistake, and that it would certainly be 
necessary to check them if they attempted to re- 
peat it. But the feeling also was that there was 
not the slightest chance of such a mistake being 
repeated. The mere fact that so much stir had 
been made about it was enough to secure the 
country against any chance of its passing into a 
precedent. A course of action which Mr. Glad- 
stone denounced as a '"gigantic innovation," 
which Lord Palmerston could not approve, which 
the Liberal party generally condemned, and 
which the House of Commons made the occasion 
of a significantly warning resolution, was not in 
the least likely to be converted by repetition into 
an established principle and precedent. This 
was the reason why the country took the whole 
matter with comparative indifference. 

The whole controversy has little political im- 
portance now. Perhaps it is most interesting 
for the evidence it gave that Mr. Gladstone was 
every day drifting more and mote away from the 
opinions, not merely of his old Conservative as- 
sociates, but even of his later Whig colleagues. 
The position which he took up in this dispute 
was entirely different from that of Lord Palmer- 
ston. He condemned without reserve or mitiga- 
tion the conduct of the Lords, and he condemned 
it on the very grounds which made his words 
most welcome to the Radicals. The first decided 
adhesion of Mr. Gladstone to the doctrines of 
the more advanced Liberals is generally regarded 
as having taken place at a somewhat later period, 
and in relation to a different question. It would 
seem, however, that the earliest intimation of the 
course Mr. Gladstone was thenceforward to tread 
was his declaration that the constitutional privi- 
leges of the representative assembly would not 
be safe in the hands of the Conservative Opposi- 
tion. Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, cer- 
tainly suffered some damage in the eyes of the 
extreme Liberals. Still, Lord Palmerston's reso- 
lutions contained in them quite enough to prove 
to the Lords that they had gone a little too far, 
and that they must not attempt anything of the 
kind again. A story used to be told of Lord 
Palmerston at that time which would not have 
been out of character if it had been true. Some 
one, it was said, pressed him to say what he in- 
tended to do about the Lords and the reimposition 
of the paper duties. "I mean to tell them," was 
the alleged reply of Lord Palmerston, " that it 



was a very good joke for once, but they must not 
give it to us again." This was really the effect 
of Palmerston's resolutions. The Lords took the 
bint: they did not try it again. Even in that 
year, I860, Mr. Gladstone was able to carry his 
resolution for removing, in accordance with the 
provisions of the French Treaty, so much of the 
Customs duty on imported paper as exceeded the 
Excise duty on paper made bete at home. 

Meanwhile the Government had sustained a 
severe humiliation in another way. They had 
had to abandon their Reform Bill. The Bill 
was a moderate and simple scheme of reform. 
It proposed to lower the county franchise to £10, 
and that of the boroughs to £6 ; and to make 
a considerable redistribution of seats. The Bill 
was brought in on March 1. The second read- 
ing was moved on March 19. Mr. Disraeli con- 
demned the measure then, although he did not 
propose to offer any opposition to it at that stage. 
He made a long and labored speech, in which he 
talked of the Bill as "a measure of a mediaeval 
character, without the inspiration of the feudal 
system, or the genius of the Middle Ages." No 
one knew exactly what this meant; but it was 
loudly applauded by Mr. Disraeli's followers, and 
was thought rather fine by some of those who 
sat on the Ministerial side. Long nights of de- 
bate, more or less languid, followed. Mr. Dis- 
raeli, with his usual sagacity, was merely wait- 
ing to see how things would go before he com- 
mitted himself or his party to any decided 
opposition. He began very soon to see that there 
was no occasion for him to take any great trouble 
in the matter. He and his fiends had little 
more to do than to look on and smile compla- 
cently while the chances of the Bill were being 
hopelessly undermined by some of the followers 
of the Government. The milder Whigs hated 
the scheme rather more than the Tories did. 
Lord Palmerston was well known to be person- 
ally indifferent to its fate. Lord Palmerston 
was not so foreseeing as Mr. Disraeli. The 
leader of the Opposition knew well enough, even 
then, that a Reform Bill of some kind would 
have to be brought in before long. Mr. Disraeli 
probably foresaw, even then, that it might be 
convenient to his own party one day to seek for 
the credit of carrying a Radical Reform Bill. 
He therefore took care not to express any dis- 
approval of the principles of reform in the debates 
that took place on the second reading of Lord 
John Russell's Bill. His manner was that of 
one who looks on scornfully at a bungling at- 
tempt to do some piece of work which he could 
do much better if he had a chance of making the 
attempt. 

Meanwhile the Bill was drifting and flounder- 
ing on to destruction. If Lord Palmerston had 
spoken one determined word in its favor the 
Conservatives would not have taken on them- 
selves the responsibility of a prolonged resistance, 
and those of the Liberals who secretly detested 
the measure would not have had the courage to 
stand up against Lord Palmerston. Very soon 
they came to understand, or at least to believe, 
that Lord Palmerston would be rather pleased 
than otherwise to see the measure brought into 
contempt. Lord Palmerston took practically 
no part in the debates. He did actually make 
a speech at a late period; but, as Mr. Disraeli 
said with admirable effect, it was a speech not so 
much " in support of, as about, the Reform Bill." 
Sir George Lewis argued for the Bill so coldly 
and sadly that Sir E. B. Lytton brought down 
the laughter and cheers of both sides of the 
House when he described Lew is as having " come 
to bury Ciesar, not to praise him." The measure 
was already doomed : it was virtually dead and 
buried. Notice was given of amendment after 
amendment, chiefly or altogether by professing 
Liberals. The practice of obstructing the prog- 
ress of the Bill by incessant speech-making was 
introduced and made to work with ominous 
effect. Some of the more boisterous of the To- 
ries began to treat the whole thing as a good 
piece of fun. Once an attempt was made to get 
the House counted out during the progress of 
the debate. It would be a capital inean^ of re- 
ducing the whole discussion to an absurdity, 
some members thought, if the House could actu- 



50 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



ally be counted out during a debate on the Re- 
form Bill. A Bill to remould the whole political 
constitution of the country — and the House of 
Commons not caring enough about the subject 
to contribute forty listeners, or even forty patient 
watchers, within the precincts of Westminster 
Palace! When the attempt to count did not 
succeed in the ordinary way, it occurred to the 
genius of some of the Conservatives that the ob- 
ject might be accomplished by a little gentle and 
not unacceptable violence. A number of stout 
squires, therefore, got round the door in the lob- 
by, and endeavored, by sheer physical obstruc- 
tion, to prevent zealous members from re-enter- 
ing the House. It will be easily understood 
what the temper of the majority was, when horse- 
play of this kind could even be attempted. At 
length it was evident that the Bill could not 
pass ; that the talk which was in preparation 
must smother it. The moment the Bill got into 
committee there would be amendments on every 
line of it, and every member could speak as often 
as he pleased. The session was passing ; the 
financial measures could not be postponed or put 
aside ; the opponents of the Reform Bill, open 
and secret, had the Government at their mercy. 
On Monday, June 11, Lord John Russell an- 
nounced that the Government had made up 
their minds to withdraw the Bill. Thencefor- 
ward it was understood that Lord Palmerston 
would have no more of Reform. There was to 
be no Reform Bill while Lord Palmerston lived. 

The Queen's speech at the opening of Parlia- 
ment, on January 24, 1860, mentioned, among 
other things, the renewal of disturbances in 
China. The treaty of Tien- tsin, which bad been 
arranged by Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, con- 
tained a clause providing for the exchange of the 
ratifications at Pekin within a year from the date 
of the signature, which took place in June, 1858. 
Lord Elgin returned to England, and his broth- 
er, Mr. Frederick Bruce, was appointed in March, 
1859, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Pleni- 
potentiary to China. Mr. Bruce was directed to 
proceed by way of the Peiho to Tien-tsin, and 
thence to Pekin, to exchange the ratifications 
of the treaty. Lord Malmesbury, who was then 
Foreign Secretary, pointed out that the Chinese 
authorities, having the strongest objection to the 
presence of an Envoy in Pekin, would probably 
try to interpose all manner of delays and dif- 
ficulties ; and impressed upon Mr. Bruce that 
he was not to be put off from going to the capi- 
tal. Instructions were sent out from England 
at the same time to Admiral Hope, the Naval 
Commander-in-chief in China, to provide a suf- 
ficient force to accompany Mr. Bruce to the 
mouth of the Peiho. 

The Peiho river flows from the highlands on 
the west into the Gulf of Pecheli, at the north- 
east corner of the Chinese dominions. The 
capital of the empire is about one hundred miles 
inland from the mouth of the Peiho. It does 
not stand on that river, which flows past it at 
some distance westward, but it is connected with 
the river by means of a canal. The town of 
Tien-tsin stands on the Peiho near its junction 
with one of the many rivers that flow into it, 
and about forty miles from the mouth. The 
entrance to the Peiho was defended by the 
Taku forts. On June 20, 1859, Mr. Bruce and 
the French Envoy reached the mouth of the 
Peiho with Admiral Hope's fleet, some nineteen 
vessels in all, to escort them. They found the 
forts defended ; some negotiations and inter- 
communications took place, and a Chinese of- 
ficial from Tien-tsin came to Mr. Bruce and en- 
deavored to obtain some delay or compromise. 
Mr. Bruce became convinced that the condition 
of things predicted by Lord Malmesbury was 
coming about, and that the Chinese authorities 
were only trying to defeat his purpose. He 
called on Admiral Hope to clear a passage for 
the vessels. When the Admiral brought up his 
gunboats the forts opened fire. The Chinese 
artillerymen showed unexpected skill and precis- 
ion. Four of the gunboats were almost imme- 
diately disabled. All the attacking vessels got 
aground. Admiral Hope attempted to storm 
the forts. The attempt was a complete failure. 
Admiral Hope himself was wounded ; so was 



the commander of the French vessel which had 
contributed a contingent to the storming party. 
The attempt to force a passage of the river was 
given up, and the mission to Pekin was over for 
the present. 

It seems only fair to say that the Chinese at 
the mouth of the Peiho cannot be accused of 
perfidy.. They had mounted the forts and bar- 
ricaded the river openly and even ostentatiously. 
The English Admiral knew for days and days 
that the forts were armed, and that the passage 
of the river was obstructed. Some of the Eng- 
lish officers who were actually engaged in the 
attempt of Admiral Hope frankly repudiated 
the idea of any treachery on the part of the 
Chinese, or any surprise on their own side. 
They knew perfectly well, they said, that the 
forts were about to resist the attempt to force a 
way for the Envoys up the river. 

It will be easily imagined that the news created 
a deep sensation in England. People in general 
made up their minds at once that the matter 
could not be allowed to rest there, and that the 
mission to Pekin must be enforced. At the same 
time a strong feeling prevailed that the Envoy, 
Mr. Bruce, had been imprudent and precipitate 
in his conduct. For this, however, it seems more 
just to blame Lord Malmesbury than Mr. Bruce, 
who might well have thought that his instructions 
left him no alternative but to force his way. Be- 
fore the whole question came to be discussed in 
Parliament the Conservatives had gone out and 
the Liberals had come in. 

The English and the French Governments de- 
termined that the men who had made the treaty 
of Tien-tsin — Lord Elgin and Baron Gros — 
should be sent back to insist on its reinforcement. 
Sir Hope Grant was appointed to the military 
command of our land forces, and General Cousin 
de Montauban, afterwards Count Palikao, co 
manded the soldiers of France. The Chinese, to 
do them justice, fought very bravely, but of course 
they had no chance whatever against such forces 
as those commanded by the English and French 
generals. The allies captured the Taku forts, 
occupied Tien-tsin, and marched on Pekin. The 
Chinese Government endeavored to negotiate for 
peace and to interpose any manner of delay, dip- 
lomatic or otherwise, between the allies and 
their progress to the capital. Lord Elgin con- 
sented at last to enter into negotiations at Tung- 
chow, a walled town ten or twelve miles nearer 
than Pekin. Before the negotiations took place 
Lord Elgin's secretaries, Mr. Parkes and Mr. 
Loch, some English officers, Mr. Bowlby, the cor- 
respondent of the Times, and some members of 
the staff of Baron Gros, were treacherously seized 
by the Chinese while under a flag of truce and 
dragged off to various prisons. Mr. Parkes and 
Mr. Loch, with eleven of their companions, were 
afterwards released, after having been treated 
with much cruelty and indignity, but thirteen of 
the prisoners died of the horrible ill-treatment 
they received. Lord Elgin refused to negotiate 
until the prisoners had been returned, and the 
allied armies were actually at one of the great 
gates of Pekin, and had their guns in position to 
blow the gate in, when the Chinese acceded to 
their terms. The gate was surrendered, the allies 
entered the city, and the English and French 
flags were hoisted side by side on the walls of 
Pekin. It was only after entering the city that 
Lord Elgin learned of the murder of the captives. 
He then determined that the Summer Palace 
should be burned down, as a means of impressing 
the mind of the Chinese authorities generally 
with some sense of the danger of treachery and 
foul play. Two days were occupied in the de- 
struction of the palace. It covered an area of 
many miles. Gardens, temples, small lodges and 
pagodas, groves, grottoes, lakes, bridges, terra- 
ces, artificial hills, diversified the vast space. All 
the artistic treasures, all the curiosilies, archaeo- 
logical and other, that Chinese wealth and Chi- 
nese taste, such as it was, could bring together, 
had been accumulated in this magnificent pleas- 
aunce. The surrounding scenery was beautiful. 
The high mountains of Tartary ramparted one 
side of the enclosure. The buildings were set on 
fire ; the whole place was given over to destruc- 
tion. A monument was raised with an inscrip- 



tion in Chinese, setting forth that such was the 
reward of perfidy and cruelty. 

Very different opinions were held in England 
as to the destruction of the Imperial palace. To 
many it seemed an act of unintelligible and un- 
pardonable vandalism. Lord Elgin explained, 
that if he did not demand the surrender of the 
actual perpetrators, it was because he knew full 
well that no difficulty would have been m:ide 
about giving him a seeming satisfaction. The 
Chinese Government would have selected for vi- 
carious punishment, in all probability, a crowd of 
mean and unfortunate wretches who had nothing 
to do with the murders, who perhaps had never 
heard that such minders were done, and who 
would possibly even go to their death without the 
slightest notion of the reason why they were 
chosen out for such a doom. Most of our actions 
in the war were unjustifiable; Lord Elgin's was 
the one for which, perhaps, the best case could be 
made out by a moralist. It is somewhat singu- 
lar that so many persons should have been roused 
to indignation by the destruction of a building 
who took with perfect composure the unjust in- 
vasion of a country. The allied powers now of 
course had it all their own way. England estab- 
lished her right to have an envoy in Pekin, 
whether the Chinese liked it or not. China had 
to pay a war indemnity, and a large sum of 
money as compensation to the families of the 
murdered prisoners and to those who had suffered 
injuries, and to make an apology for the attack 
by the garrison of the Taku forts. Perhaps the 
most important gain to Europe from the war was 
the knowledge that Pekin was not by any means 
so large a city as we had all imagined it to be, 
and that it was on the whole rather a crumbling 
and tumble-down sort of place. 

The same year saw also the troubles in the 
mountain terraces of the Lebanon, which like- 
wise led to the combined intervention of Eng- 
land and France. The disturbances arose out 
of the rivalries and quarrels between two sects, 
the Maronites, who were Christians, and the 
Druses, who were neither Christians nor Mus- 
sulmans. The Turkish commander disarmed 
many of the Maronites near Beyrout, and seems 
then to have abandoned them to the Druses, who 
massacred them all. In July the fanatical spirit 
spread to Damascus. A mob of Turkish fanat- 
ics made a general attack upon the Christian 
quarter, and burned the greater part of it down. 
The consulates of France, Russia, Austria, 
Holland, Belgium, and Greece were destroyed. 
Nearly two thousand Christians were massacred 
in that one day's work. Many of the respecta- 
ble Mussulman inhabitants of Damascus, the 
famous Algerian chief Abd-el-Kader among 
them, were most generous and brave in their at- 
tempts to save and shelter the unfortunate Chris- 
tians; but the Turkish Governor of Damascus, 
although he had a strong military force at his 
disposal, made no serious effort to interfere with 
the work of massacre ; and, as might be expect- 
ed, his supineness was construed by the mob as 
an official approval of their doings, and they 
murdered with all the more vigor and zest. 

The news of the massacre in the Lebanon nat- 
urally created a profound sensation in England. 
England and France took strong and decisive 
steps. They resolved upon instant intervention 
to restore tranquillity in the Lebanon. A con- 
vention was drawn up, to which all the Great 
Powers of Europe agreed, and which Turkey 
had to accept. By the convention England and 
France were intrusted with the duty of restoring 
order. France undertook to supply the troops 
required in the first instance; farther require- 
ments were to be met as the intervening Powers 
might think fit. The intervening Powers pledged 
themselves reciprocally not to seek for any terri- 
torial advantage or exclusive influence. Eng- 
land sent out Lord Dufferin to act as her Com- 
missioner; and Lord Dufferin accomplished his 
task with as much spirit as judgment. The 
Turkish Government, to do it justice, had at last 
shown great energy in punishing the authors and 
the abettors of the massacres. The Sultan sent 
outFuad Pasha, his Minister for Foreign Affairs, 
to the Lebanon ; and Fuad Pasha showed no 
mercy to the promoters of the disturbances, or 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OL'K OWN TIMES. 



51 



even to the highly-placed official abettors of them. 
The Governor of Damascus and the commander 
of the Turkish troops suffered deatli for their 
part in the transactions, and about sixty persons 
were publicly executed in the city, of whom the 
greater number belonged to the Turkish police 
force. When the intervention had succeeded in 
thoroughly restoring order the representatives of 
the Great Powers assembled in Constantinople 
unanimously agreed that a Christian governor of 
the Lebanon should be appointed in subordina- 
tion to the Sultan ; and the Sultan had, of course, 
no choice but to agree to this proposition. The 
French troops evacuated Syria in June, 1801, 
and thereby much relieved the minds of many 
Englishmen, who had long forgotten all about 
the domestic affairs of the Lebanon in their 
alarm lest the French Imperial troops, having 
once set foot in Syria, should not easily be in- 
duced to quit the country again. 

It would hardly be fitting to close the history 
of this eventful year without giving a few lines 
to record the peaceful end of a stormy life. 
Quietly in his Kensington home passed away, in 
the late autumn of this year, Thomas Cochrane 
— the gallant Dundonald, the hero of the Basque 
Roads, the volunteer who lent his genius and his 
courage to the cause of Brazil, of Chili, and 
of Greece; a sailor of the Elizabethan mould. 
Lord Dundonald had been the victim of cruel, 
although not surely intentional, injustice. lie 
was accused of having had a share in the famous 
stockjobbing frauds of 1814 ; he was tried, found 
guilty, sentenced to fine and imprisonment ; ex- 
pelled from the House of Commons, dismissed 
from the service which he had helped to make 
yet more illustrious than he found it; and de- 
prived of all his public honors. He lived to see 
his innocence believed in as well by his enemies 
as by his friends. William IV. reinstated him 
in his naval rank, and Queen Victoria had the 
congenial task of completing the restoration of 
his well-won honors. It was not, however, until 
many years after his death that the country fully 
acquitted itself of the mere money debt which 
it owed to Lord Dundonald and his family. 
Cochrane was a Radical in politics, and for some 
years sat as a colleague of Sir Francis Bur- 
dett in the representation of Westminster. He 
carried on in the House of Commons many a 
bitter argument with Mr. John Wilson Croker, 
when the latter was Secretary to the Admiralty. 
It cannot be doubted that Cochrane's political 
views and his strenuous way of asserting them 
made him many enemies, and that some men 
were glad of the opportunity for revenge which 
was given by the accusation got up against him. 
His was an impatient spirit, little suited for 
the discipline of Parliamentary life. His tongue 
was often bitter, and he was too apt to assume 
that a political opponent must be a person un- 
worthy of respect. Even in his own service lie 
was impatient of rebuke. To those under his 
command he was always genial and brotherly ; 
but to those above him he was sometimes want- 
ing in that patient submission which is an essen- 
tial quality of those who would learn how to 
command with most success. Cochrane's true 
place was on his quarter-deck ; his opportunity 
came in the extreme moment of danger. Then 
his spirit asserted itself. His gift was that which 
wrenches success out of the very jaws of failure ; 
he saw his way most clearly when most others 
began to despair. His later life had been passed 
in retirement. It was his death, on October 30, 
18G0, which recalled to the mind of the living 
generation the hero whose exploits had divided 
the admiration of their fathers with those of 
Nelson, of Colliugwood, and of Sidney Smith. 
A new style of naval warfare has come up since 
those days, and perhaps Cochrane may be re- 
garded as the last of the old sea-kings. 

CHAPTER XVIH. 
Tin: civil. WAi; in AMERICA. 

Civn. war broke out in the United States. 
Abraham Lincoln's election as President, brought 
about by the party divisions of the Southerners 
among themselves, seemed to the South the lie- 
ginning of a new order of things, in which they 



and their theories of government would no long- 
er predominate. The struggle became one for 
life or death between slavery and the principles 
of modern society. Slavery existed in the South- 
ern States, though it had ceased long to exist in 
the North. The two systems were really incom- 
patible, but the inevitable struggle between the 
supporters and the opponents of slavery might 
have been indefinitely delayed if the Southern 
States, the Slave States, had not decided to se- 
cede from the Union, to cut themselves adrift 
from the abolitionist North, and form a slave- 
holding confederation of their own. 

The Southern States, led by South Carolina, 
seceded. Their delegates assembled at Mont- 
gomery, in Alabama, on February 4, 1801, to 
agree upon a constitution. A Southern confed- 
eration was formed, with Mr. Jefferson Davis as 
its President. Even then war might not have 
taken place ; the North and South might have 
come to some agreement but for the impetuous 
action of South Carolina. This State had been 
the first to secede, and it was the first to commit 
an act of war. The traveller in South Carolina, 
as lie stands on one of the quays of Charleston 
and looks towards the Atlantic, sees the sky-line 
across the harbor broken by a heavy -looking, 
solid square fort, which soon became famous in 
the war. This was Fort Sumter, a place built 
on an artificial island, with walls some sixty 
feet high and eight to twelve feet thick. It 
was in the occupation of the Federal Govern- 
ment, as of course were the defences of all the har- 
bors of the Union. It is, perhaps, not necessary 
to say that while each State made independently 
its local laws, the Federal Government and Con- 
gress had the charge of all business of national 
interest, customs duties, treaties, the army and 
navy, and the coast defences. The excited Se- 
cessionists of South Cnrolina began to bombard 
the fort. The little garrison had no means of 
resistance, and after a harmless bombardment of 
two days it surrendered. The Federal Presi- 
dent, Abraham Lincoln, had been anxious, if 
possible, to enable North and South to come to 
some terms without going to war. After the 
fall of Sumter, however, there was no prospect 
of any peaceful settlement of the quarrel. There 
was an end to all negotiations; thenceforward 
only strokes could arbitrate. 

Four days after, President Lincoln called for 
seventy-five thousand men to volunteer in re-es- 
tablishing the Federal authority over the rebel 
States. President Davis immediately announced 
his intention to issue letters of marque. Presi- 
dent Lincoln declared the Southern ports under 
blockade. On May 8 Lord John Russell an- 
nounced in the House of Commons, that after 
consulting the law officers of the Crown the Gov- 
ernment were of opinion that the Southern Con- 
federacy must be recognized as a belligerent 
power. On May 13 the neutrality proclamation 
was issued by the Government, warning all sub- 
jects of her Majesty from enlisting, on land or sea, 
in the service of Federals or Confederates, supply- 
ing munitions of war, equipping vessels for priva- 
teering purposes, engaging in transport service, 
or doing any other act calculated to afford assist- 
ance to either belligerent. 

At first the feeling of Englishmen was almost 
unanimously in favor of the North. It was 
thought that the Southern States would be al- 
lowed quietly to secede, and must Englishmen' 
did not take a great interest in the mutter, or, 
when they did, were inclined to regard the 
Southerners as a turbulent and troublesome set, 
who had better be permitted to go off with their 
peculiar institution and keep it all to themselves. 
When, however, it became apparent that the 
secession must lead to war, theu many of the 
same Englishmen began to blame the North for 
making the question any cause of disturbance to 
the world. There was a kind of impatient feel- 
ing, as if we and the world in general had no 
right to be troubled with these American quar- 
rels; as if it were unfair to us that our cotton 
trade should be interrupted and we ourselves put 
to inconvenience for a dispute about secession. 
There clearly would have been no war and no 
disturbance if only the North had agreed to let 
the South go, and" therefore people on this side 



of the Atlantic set themselves to find good cause 
for blaming the statesmen who did not give in 
to anything rather than disturb the world with 
their obstinacy and their Union. Out of this 
condition of feeling came the resolve to find the 
North in the wrong; and out of that resolve 
came with many the discovery that the Northern 
statesmen were all hypocrites. Suddenly, as if 
to decide wavering minds, an event was reported 
which made hosts of admirers for the South in 
England. The battle of Bull Run took place on 
July 21, ISC] , and the raw levies of the North 
were defeated, thrown into confusion, and in 
some instances driven into ignominious flight. 

This was not very surprising. The South- 
erners had always a taste for soldiering, and had 
kept up their State militia systems with an energy 
and exactness which the business-men of the 
North had neither the time nor the inclination 
to imitate. It was not very surprising if some 
of the hastily-raised Northern regiments of vol- 
unteers should have proved wretched soldiers, 
and should have yielded to the sudden influence 
of panic. But when the news reached England 
a very fliime of enthusiasm leaped up for the 
brave South, which, though so small in numbers, 
had contrived with such spirit and ease to defeat 
the " Yankees." It is important for the fair un- 
derstanding and appreciation of the events that 
followed, to remember that there was, among all 
the advocates of the South in England, a very 
general conviction that the North was sure to be 
defeated and broken up, and was therefore in 
no sense a formidable power. It is well also to 
bear in mind that there were only two European 
States which entertained this feeling and allowed 
it to be everywhere understood. The Southern 
scheme found support only in England and in 
France. In all other European countries the 
sympathy of people and Government alike went 
with the North. In most places the sympathy 
arose from a detestation of slavery. In Russia, 
or at least with the Russian Government, it arose 
from a dislike of rebellion. The effect was that 
assurances of friendship came from all civilized 
countries to the Northern States except from 
England and France alone. One of the latest 
instructions given by Cavour on his deathbed in 
this year was that an assurance should be sent 
to the Federal Government that Italy could give 
its sympathies to no movement which tended to 
the perpetuation of slavery. The Pope, Pius 
IX.. and Cardinal Antonelli repeatedly expressed 
their hopes for the success of the Northern cause. 
On the other hand, the Emperor of the French 
fully believed that the Southern cause was sure 
to triumph, and that the Union would be broken 
np ; he was even very willing to hasten what he 
assumed to be the unavoidable end. He was 
anxious that England should join with him in 
some measures to facilitate the success of the 
South by recognizing the Government of the 
Southern Confederation. He had afterwards 
reason to curse the day when he reckoned on 
the break-up of the Union and persuaded him- 
self that there was no occasion to take account 
of the Northern strength. Yet in France the 
people in general were on the side of the North. 
(Jul}' the Emperor and his Government were on 
that of the South. In England, on the other 
hand, the vast majority of what are called the 
influential classes came to be heart and soul with 
the South, and strove to bring or force the Gov- 
ernment to the same side. 

At first the Northern States counted with ab- 
solute confidence upon the sympathy of England. 
The one reproach Englishmen had always been 
casting in their face was that they did not take 
any steps to put down slavery, it is easy to un- 
derstand, therefore, how Mr. Lincoln and his 
friends counted on the sympathy of the English 
Government and the English people, and how 
surprised they were when they found English 
statesmen, journalists, preachers, ami English 
society generally deriding their misfortunes and 
apparently wishing for the success of their iocs. 
Their surprise changed into a feeling of I. irter dis- 
appointment. and that gave place u> an angry tem- 
per, which exaggerated every symptom of ill-will, 
distorted every fact, and saw wrong even where 
there only existed au honest purpose to do right. 



52 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



It was while this temper was beginning to light 
up on both sides of the Atlantic that the unfor- 
tunate affair of the Trent occurred. The Con- 
federate Government was anxious to have a regu- 
lar envoy in London and another in Paris. Mr. 
Slidell, a prominent Southern lawyer and politi- 
cian, was to represent the South at the Court of the 
Emperor Napoleon, provided he could obtain re- 
cognition there ; and Mr. James Murray Mason, 
the author of the Fugitive Slave Law, was to be 
despatched on a similar mission to the Court of 
Queen Victoria. The two Southern envoys es- 
caped together from Charleston, one dark and 
wet October night, in a small steamer, and got 
to Havana. There they took passage for South- 
ampton in the English mail steamer Trent. The 
United States sloop-of-war San Jacinto happen- 
ed to be returning from the African coast about 
the same time. Her commander, Captain Wilkes, 
was a somewhat hot-tempered and indiscreet offi- 
cer. He learned at Havana that the Confeder- 
ate agents, with their secretaries, were on their 
way to Europe. He intercepted the Trent. An 
armed party was then sent on board, and the 
Confederate envoys were seized, with their secre- 
taries, and carried as prisoners on board the San 
Jacinto, despite the protest of the captain of the 
English steamer, and from under the protection 
of the English flag. The prisoners were first 
carried to New York, and then confined in one 
of the forts in Boston harbor. Now, there can- 
not be the slightest doubt of the illegality of this 
proceeding on the part of Captain Wilkes. Mr. 
Lincoln at once declared that the act of Captain 
Wilkes could not be sustained. Lord Russell 
demanded the surrender of the prisoners, and on 
January 1, 1862, the Confederate envoys were 
given up on the demand of the British Govern- 
ment, and sailed for Europe. Unfortunately, 
however, a great deal of harm had been done in 
the mean time. Popular clamor in the United 
States had entirely approved of the action of 
Captain Wilkes. Lord Palmerston's Government 
acted, from the first, as if an instant appeal to 
arms must be necessary. The episode was sin- 
gularly unfortunate in its effect upon the temper 
of the majority in England and America. From 
that moment there was a formidable party in 
England who detested the North, and a formi- 
dable party in the North who detested England. 

The cause of peace between nations lost a good 
friend at the close of 1861. The Prince Consort 
died. The death of the Prince, lamentable in 
everyway, was especially to be deplored at a time 
when influential counsels tending towards for- 
bearance and peace were much needed in Eng- 
land. But it may be said, with literal truth, that 
when the news of the Prince's death was made 
known its possible effect on the public affairs of 
England was forgotten orunthought of in the re- 
gret for the personal loss. Outside the precincts 
of Windsor Castle itself the event was wholly un- 
expected. Perhaps even within the precincts of 
the Castle there was little expectation up to the 
last that such a calamity was so near. The pub- 
lic had only learned a few days before that the 
Prince was unwell. On December 8 the Court 
Circular mentioned that he was confined to his 
room by a feverish cold. Then it was announced 
that he was " suffering from fever, unattended by 
unfavorable symptoms, but likely, from its symp- 
toms, to continue for some time." This latter 
announcement appeared in the form of a bulletin 
on Wednesday, December 11. About the mid- 
night of Saturday, the 14th, there was some sen- 
sation and surprise created throughout London 
by the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's. Not 
many people even suspected the import of the 
unusual sound. It signified the death of the 
Prince Consort. He died at ten minutes before 
eleven that Saturday night, in the presence of the 
Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the Princesses 
Alice and Helena. The fever had become fierce 
and wasting on Friday, and from that time it 
was only a descent to death. Congestion of the 
lungs set in, the consequences of exhaustion ; 
the Prince fell into utter weakness, and died 
conscious, but without pain. He knew the Queen 
to the last. His latest look was turned to her. 

The Prince Consort was little more than forty- 
wo years of age when he died. He had always 



seemed to be in good, although not perhaps robust, 
health ; and he had led a singularly temperate 
life. No one in the kingdom seemed less likely 
to be prematurely cutoff; and bis death came on 
the whole country with the shock of an utter sur- 
prise. The regret was universal ; and the deep- 
est regret was for the wife he had loved so dear- 
ly, and whom he was condemned so soon to leave 
behind. Every testimony has spoken to the sin- 
gularly tender and sweet affection of the loving 
home the Queen and Prince had made for them- 
selves. A domestic happiness rare even among 
the obscurest was given to them. It is one of 
the necessities of royal position that marriage 
should be seldom the union of hearts. The "hoice 
is limited by considerations which do not affect 
people in private life. The convenience of States 
has to be taken into account — the possible likings 
and dislikings of peoples whom perhaps the bride 
and bridegroom have never seen, and are never 
destined to see. A marriage among princes is, 
in nine cases out of ten, a marriage of conven- 
ience only. Seldom indeed is it made, as that 
of the Queen was, wholly out of love. Seldom 
is it even in love-matches when the instincts of 
love are not deceived and the affection grows 
stronger with the days. Every one knew that 
this had been the strange good fortune of the 
Queen of England. There was something poetic, 
romantic in the sympathy with which so many 
faithful and loving hearts turned to her in her 
hour of unspeakable distress. 

The controversy about the Trent was hardly 
over when Lord Russell and Mr. Adams were 
engaged in the more prolonged and far more seri- 
ous controversy about the Confederate privateers. 
Some Confederate cruisers, the Savannah, the 
Sumter, the Nashville, and the Petrel, scoured 
the seas for a while as privateers, and did some 
damage to the shipping of the Northern States. 
These were, however, but small vessels, and each 
had only a short run of it. The first privateer 
which became really formidable to the shipping 
of the North was a vessel called in her earlier 
history the Oreto, but afterwards better known 
as the Florida. Within three months she had 
captured fifteen vessels. Thirteen of these she 
burnt, and the other two were converted into 
cruisers by the Confederate Government. The 
Florida was built in Birkenhead, nominally for 
the use of the Italian Government. She got out 
of the Mersey without detention or difficulty, al- 
though the American Minister had warned our 
Government of her real purpose. From that 
time Great Britain became what an American 
writer calls without any exaggeration "the na- 
val base of the Confederacy." As fast as ship- 
builders could work they were preparing in 
British shipping yards a privateer navy for the 
Confederate Government. Mr. Gladstone said, 
in a speech which was the subject of much com- 
ment, that Jefferson Davis had made a navy. 
The statement was at all events not literally cor- 
rect. The English ship-builders made the navy. 
Mr. Davis only ordered it and paid for it. Only 
seven Confederate privateers were really formi- 
dable to the United States, and of these five were 
built in British dockyards. We are not includ- 
ing in the list any of the actual war-vessels, the 
rams and iron-clads, that British energy was pre- 
paring for the Confederate Government. We 
are now speaking merely of the privateers. 

Of these privateers the most famous by far 
was the Alabama. It was the fortune of this 
vessel to be the occasion of the establishment of 
a new rule in the law of nations. It had nearly 
been her fortune to bring England and the United 
States into war. The Alabama was built ex- 
pressly for the Confederate service in one of the 
dockyards of the Mersey. She was built by the 
house of Laird, a firm of the greatest reputation 
in the ship-building trade, and whose former head 
was the representative of Birkenhead in the 
House of Commons. While in process of con- 
struction she was called the "290;" and it was 
not until she had put to sea and hoisted the 
Confederate flag, and Captain Semmes, formerly 
commander of the Sumter, had appeared on her 
deck in full Confederate uniform, that she took 
the name of the Alabama. During her career 
the Alabama captured nearly seventy Northern 



vessels. Her plan was always the same. She 
hoisted the British flag, and thus decoyed her in- 
tended victim within her reach; then she dis- 
played the Confederate colors and captured her 
prize. But the Alabama did not do much fight- 
ing; she preyed on merchant vessels that could 
not fight. Only twice, so far as we know, did 
she engage in a fight. The first time was with the 
Hatteras, a small blockading ship, whose broad- 
side was so unequal to that of the Alabama that 
she was sunk in a quarter of an hour. The 
second time was with ihe United States ship of 
war Kearsan/e, whose size and armaments were 
about equal to her own. The fight took place 
off the French shore, near Cherbourg, and the 
career of the Alabama was finished in an hour. 
The Confederate rover was utterly shattered, 
and went down. Captain Semmes was saved by 
an English steam yacht, and brought to England 
to be made a hero for a while, and then forgot- 
ten. The cruise of the Alabama had lasted 
nearly two years. During this time she had 
contrived to drive American commerce from the 
seas. 

The United States Government complained 
that the Alabama was practically an English 
vessel. She was built by English builders in an 
English - dockyard : she was manned for the 
most part by an English crew ; her guns were 
English ; her gunners were English ; many of 
the latter belonged to the Royal Naval Reserve, 
and were actually receiving pay from the Eng- 
lish Government; she sailed under the English 
flag, was welcomed in English harbors, and nev- 
er was in, or even saw, a Confederate port. Mr. 
Adams called the attention of the Government 
in good time to the fact that the Alabama was 
in course of construction in the dock-yard of 
Messrs. Laird, and that she was intended for the 
Confederate Service. Indeed, there never was 
the slightest doubt on the mind of any one about 
the business for which the vessel in the Birken- 
head dock-yard was destined. There was no at- 
tempt at concealment in the matter. Newspaper 
paragraphs described the gradual construction of 
the Confederate cruiser, as if it were a British 
vessel of war tiiat Messrs. Laird had in hand. 
Whatever technical difficulties might have inter- 
vened, it is clear that no real doubt on the mind 
of the Government had anything to do with the 
delays that took place. At last Lord Russell 
asked for the opinion of the Queen's Advocate. 
Time was pressing ; the cruiser was nearly ready 
for sea. Everything seemed to be against us. 
The Queen's Advocate happened to be sick at 
the moment, and there was another delay. At 
last he gave his opinion that the vessel ought to 
be delained. The opinion came just too late. 
The Alabama had got to sea ; her cruise of 
nearly two years began. She went upon her de- 
stroying course with the cheers of English sym- 
pathizers and the rapturous tirades of English 
newspapers glorifying her. When Mr. Bright 
brought on the question in the House of Com- 
mons, Mr. Laird declared that he would rather 
be known as the builder of a dozen Alabamas 
than be a man who, like Mr. Bright, had set 
class against class ; and the majority of the 
House applauded him to the echo. Lord Pal- 
merston peremptorily declared that in this coun- 
try we were not in the habit of altering our laws 
to please a foreign State ; a declaration which 
came with peculiar effect from the author of the 
abortive Conspiracy Bill, got up to propitiate the 
Emperor of the French. 

The building of vessels for the Confederates 
began to go on with more boldness than ever. 
Two iron rams of the most formidable kind 
were built and about to be launched in 1863 
for the purpose of forcibly opening the Southern 
ports and destroying the blockading vessels. 
Mr. Adams kept urging on Lord Russell, and 
for a long time in vain, that something must 
be done to stop their departure. Lord Russell 
at first thought the British Government could 
not interfere in any way. Mr. Adams pressed 
and protested, and at length was informed that 
the matter was "now under the serious consid- 
eration of her Majesty's Government." At last, 
on September 5, Mr. Adams wrote to tell Lord 
Russell that one of the iron-clad vessels was on 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



58 



the point of departure from this kingdom on its 
hostile errand against the United States ; and 
added, "' It would he superfluous in me to point 
oat to your lordship that this is war." On Sep- 
tember 8 Mr. Adams received the following: 
"Lord Russell presents his compliments to Mr. 
Adams, and lias the honor to inform him that 
instructions have heen issued to prevent the de- 
parture of the two ironclad vessels from Liver- 
pool." No more Confederate war-ships sailed 
from English ports after this. But Lord Russell 
declined peremptorily to admit that the English 
Government were in any way responsible for 
what had been done by the Confederate cruis- 
ers, or that England was called on to alter her 
domestic law to please her neighbors. Mr. 
Adams therefore dropped the matter for the 
time, intimating, however, that it was only put 
aside for the moment. The United States Gov- 
ernment, had their hands full just then, and in 
any case could afford to wait. The question 
would keep. The British Government were glad 
to be relieved from the discussion and from the 
necessity of arguing the various points with Mr. 
Adams, and were under the pleasing impression 
that they had heard the last of it. 

In the mean time the war had been going bad- 
ly for the North, and her enemies began to think 
that her fate was sealed. The Emperor Napo- 
leon was working hard to get England to join 
with him in recognizing the South. Mr. Roe- 
buck had at one time a motion in the House of 
Commons calling on the English Government 
to make up their minds to the recognition ; and 
Mr. Adams had explained again and again that 
such a step would mean war with the Northern 
States. Mr. Adams was satisfied that the fate 
of Mr. Roebuck's motion would depend on the 
military events of a few days. He was right. 
The motion was never pressed to a division ; 
for during its progress there came at one mo- 
ment the news that General Grant had taken 
Vicksburg, on the Mississippi, and that General 
Meade had defeated the Southern General Lee 
at Gettysburg. That was the turning-point of 
the war, although not many saw it even then. 
The South never had a chance after that hour. 
There was no more said in this country about 
the recognition of the Southern Confederation, 
and the Emperor of the French was thencefor- 
ward free to carry out his plans as far as he 
could and alone. 

The Emperor Napoleon, however, was for the 
present confident and quite content with the suc- 
cess of his Mexican expedition. Mexico had 
been for a long time in a very disorganized state. 
The Constitutional Government of Benito Juarez 
had come into power, and got into difficulties 
with several foreign states, England among the 
rest, over the claims of foreign creditors, and 
wrongs committed against foreign subjects. Lord 
Russell, who had acted with great forbearance 
towards Mexico up to this time, now agreed to co- 
operate with France and Spain in exacting repa- 
ration from Juarez. But he explained clearly 
that England would have nothing to do with up- 
setting the Government of Mexico, or imposing 
any European system on the Mexican people. 
The Emperor of the French, however, had al- 
ready made up his mind that he would establish 
a sort of feudatory monarchy in Mexico. He 
therefore persuaded the Archduke Maximilian, 
brother of the Emperor of Austria, to accept the 
crown of the monarchy he proposed to set up in 
Mexico. The Archduke was a man of pure and 
noble character, hut evidently wanting in strength 
of mind, and he agreed after some hesitation to 
accept the offer. At last the designs of the 
French Government became evident to the Eng- 
lish and Spanish Plenipotentiaries, and England 
and Spain withdrew from the Convention. The 
Emperor of the French overran a certain portion 
of Mexico with his troops, be occupied the capi- 
tal, and he set up the Mexican Empire with 
Maximilian as Emperor. French troops re- 
mained to protect the new Empire. Against all 
this the United States Government protested 
from time to time. They disclaimed any inten- 
tion to prevent the Mexican people from estab- 
lishing an empire if they thought fit; but they 
pointed out that grave inconveniences must arise 



if a foreign Power like France persisted in occu- 
pying with her troops any part of the American 
continent. However, the Emperor Napoleon, 
complacently satisfied that the United States 
were going to pieces, and that the Southern Con- 
federacy would be his friend and ally, received 
the protests of the American Government with 
unveiled indifference. At last the tide in Amer- 
ican affairs turned. The Confederacy crumbled 
away — Richmond was taken ; Lee surrendered ; 
Jefferson Davis was a prisoner. Then the Unit- 
ed States returned to the Mexican Question, and 
the American Government informed Louis Na- 
poleon that it would be inconvenient, gravely in- 
convenient, if be were not to withdraw his sol- 
diers from Mexico. A significant movement of 
American troops, under a renowned general, 
then flushed with success, was made in the di- 
rection of the Mexican frontier. There was noth- 
ing for Louis Napoleon but to withdraw. Up to 
the last he had been rocked in the vainest hopes. 
Long after the end had become patent to every 
other eye he assured an English member of Par- 
liament that he looked upon the Mexican Empire 
as the greatest creation of his reign. 

The Mexican Empire lasted two months and a 
week after the last of the French troops had been 
withdrawn. Maximilian endeavored to raise an 
army of his own, and to defend himself against 
the daily increasing strength of Juarez. He 
showed all the courage which might have been 
expected from his race, and from his own previ- 
ous history. But in an evil hour for himself, and 
yielding, it is stated, to the persuasion of a French 
officer, he had issued a decree that all who resist- 
ed his authority in arms should be shot. By 
virtue of this monstrous ordinance Mexican of- 
ficers of the regular army, taken prisoners while 
resisting, as they were bound to do, the invasion 
of a European prince, were shot like brigands. 
The Mexican general, Ortega, was one of those 
thus shamefully done to death. When Juarez 
conquered, and Maximilian in his turn was made 
a prisoner, he was tried by court-martial, con- 
demned, and shot. His death created a pro- 
found sensation in Europe. He had in all his 
previous career won respect everywhere, and even 
in the Mexican scheme he was universally regard- 
ed as a noble victim who had heen deluded to 
his doom. The conduct of Juarez in thus hav- 
ing him put to death raised a cry of horror from 
all Europe ; hut it must be allowed that, by the 
fatal decree which he had issued, the unfortunate 
Maximilian had left himself liable to a stern re- 
taliation. There was cold truth in the remark 
made at the time, that if be had been only Gen- 
eral and not Archduke Maximilian his fate would 
not have aroused so much surprise or anger. 

We need not follow any farther the history 
of the American Civil War. The restoration of 
the Union, the assassination of President Lin- 
coln, and the emancipation of the colored race 
from all the disqualifications, as well as all the 
bondage, of the slave system, belong to American 
and not to English history. But the Alabama dis- 
pute led to consequences which are especially im- 
portant to England, and which shall be described 
in their due time. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE LAST OF LORD PALMERSTON. 

During the later months of his life the Prince 
Consort had been busy in preparing for another 
great International Exhibition to be held in Lon- 
don. It was arranged that this Exhibition should 
open on May 1, 1862; and although the sudden 
death of the Prince Consort greatly interfered 
with the prospects of the undertaking, it was not 
thought right that there should be any postpone- 
ment of the opening. The Exhibition building 
was erected in South Kensington, according to a 
design by Captain Fowke. It certainly was not 
a beautiful structure. It was a huge and solid 
erection of brick, with two enormous domes, each 
in shape strikingly like the famous crinoline pet- 
ticoat of the period. The Fine Arts department 
of the Exhibition was a splendid collection of 
pictures and statues. The display of products 
of all kinds from the Colonies was rich, and was 
a novelty, for the colonists contributed little in- 



deed to the Exhibition of 1851, and the interven- 
ing eleven years had been a period of immense 
colonial advance. But no one felt any longer 
any of the hopes which floated dreamily and 
gracefully round the scheme of 1851. There 
was no talk or thought of a reign of peace any 
more. The Civil War was raging in America. 
The Continent of Europe was trembling all over 
with the spasms of war just done, and the premoni- 
tory symptoms of war to come. The Exhibition 
of 18(>2 had to rely upon its intrinsic merits, like 
any ordinary show or any public market. Poe- 
try and prophecy had nothing to say to it. 

England was left for some time to an almost 
absolute inactivity. Between Palmerston and 
the Radical party in England there was a grow- 
ing coldness. He had not only thrown over Re- 
form himself, but he had apparently induced 
most of his colleagues to accept the understand- 
ing that nothing more was to be said about it. 
He bad gone in for a policy of large expenditure 
for the purpose of securing the country against 
die possibilities of French invasion. He had 
spoken of the commercial treaty with France as 
if it were a thing rather ridiculous than other- 
wise. He was unsparing whenever he had a 
chance in bis ridicule of the ballot. He had 
very little sympathy with the grievances of the 
Nonconformists, some of them even then real 
and substantial enough. He took no manner of 
interest in anything proposed for the political 
benefit of Ireland. He was indeed impatient 
of all "views;" and be regarded what is called 
philosophic statesmanship with absolute con- 
tempt. The truth is, that Palmerston ceased to 
be a statesman the moment be came to deal with 
domestic interests. When actually in the Home 
Office, and compelled to turn his attention to the 
business of that department, he proved a very ef- 
ficient administrator, because of his shrewdness 
and bis energy. But as a rule he had not much 
to do with English political affairs, and he knew 
little or nothing of them. He was even child- 
ishly ignorant of many things which any ordina- 
ry public man is supposed to know. He was at 
home in foreign — that is, in Continental politics; 
for he had hardly any knowledge of American 
affairs, and almost up to the moment of the fall 
of Richmond was confident that the Union never 
could be restored, and that separation was the 
easy and natural way of settling all the dispute. 
When be read anything except despatches he 
read scientific treatises, for be bad a keen inter- 
est in some branches of science ; but he cared 
little for modern English literature. The world 
in which he delighted to mingle talked of Conti- 
nental politics generally, and a great knowledge 
of English domestic affairs would have been 
thrown away there. Naturally, therefore, when 
Lord Palmerston had nothing particular to do 
in foreign affairs, and had to turn his attention 
to England, be relished the idea of fortifying 
her against foreign foes. Lord Palmerston 
acted sincerely on his opinion, that "man is a 
fighting and quarrelling animal," and he could 
see no better business for English statesmanship 
than to keep this country always in a condition 
to resist a possible attack from somebody. He 
differed almost radically on this point from two 
at least of his more important colleagues, Mr. 
Gladstone and Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 

Lord Palmerston's taste for foreign affairs had 
now ample means of gratification. England had 
some small troubles of her own to deal with. A 
serious insurrection sprang up in New Zealand. 
The tribe of the Waikntos, living near Auck- 
land, in the Northern Island, began a movement 
against the colonists, and this became before long 
a general rebellion of the Maori natives. The 
Maoris are a remarkably intelligent race, and 
are skilful in war as well as in peace. They had 
a certain literary art among them ; they could 
all, or nearly all, read and write; many of them 
were eloquent and could display considerable 
diplomatic skill. They fought so well in this in- 
stance that the British troops actually suffered a 
somewhat serious repulse in endeavoring to take 
one of the Maori palisado-fortified villages. In 
the end, however, the Maoris were of course de- 
feated. The quarrel was a survival of a long- 
standing dispute between the colonists and the 



54 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES - . 



natives about land. It was, in fact, the old story : 
the colonists eager to increase their stock of land, 
and the natives jealous to guard their quickly 
vanishing possession. The events led to grave 
discussion in Parliament. The Legislature of 
New Zealand passed enactments confiscating 
some nine million acres of the native lands, 
and giving the Colonial Government some- 
thing like absolute and arbitrary power of ar- 
rest and imprisonment. The Government at 
home proposed to help the colonists by a guar- 
antee to raise a loan of one million to cover the 
expenses of the war, or the colonial share of 
them, and this proposal was keenly discussed 
in the House of Commons. The Government 
passed their Guarantee Bill, not without many 
a protest from both sides of the House that colo- 
nists who readily engaged in quarrels with na- 
tives must some time or other be prepared to 
bear the expenses entailed by their own policy. 

Trouble, too, arose on the Gold Coast of Afri- 
ca. Some slaves of the King of Ashantee had 
taken refuge in British territory ; the Governor 
of Cape Coast Colony would not give them up ; 
and in the spring of 1863 the King made threat- 
ening demonstrations, and approached within for- 
ty miles of our frontier. The Governor, assum- 
ing that the settlement was about to be invaded 
by the Ashantees, took it upon him to anticipate 
the movement by sending an expedition into the 
territory of the King. The season was badly 
chosen ; the climate was pestilential ; even the 
black troops from the West Indies could not en- 
dure it, and began to die like flies. The ill- 
advised undertaking had to be given up, and the 
Government at home only escaped a vote of cen- 
sure by a narrow majority of seven. Much dis- 
cussion, also, was aroused by occurrences in Ja- 
pan. A British subject, Mr. Richardson, was 
murdered in the English settlement of Japan, 
and on an open road made free to Englishmen 
by treaty. This was in September, 18G2. The 
murder was committed by some of the followers 
of Prince Satsuma, one of the powerful feudal 
princes, who then practically divided the author- 
ity of Japan with the regular Government. Re- 
paration was demanded both from the Japanese 
Government and from Prince Satsuma ; the 
Government paid the sum demanded of them, 
£100,000, and made an apology. Prince Satsu- 
ma was called on to pay £25,000, and to see that 
the murderers were brought to punishment. Sat- 
suma did nothing, and in 1SG3 Colonel Neale, the 
English Charge cV Affaires in Japan, sent Ad- 
miral Kuper with the English fleet to Kagosima, 
Satsuma's capital, to demand satisfaction. The 
Kagosima forts opened fire on him, and he then 
bombarded the town and laid the greater portion 
of it in ashes. Fortunately, the non-combatant 
inhabitants, the women and children, had had 
time to get out of Kagosima, and the destruction 
of life was not great. The whole transaction was 
severely condemned by man}' Englishmen, but 
the House of Commons, however, sustained the 
Government by a large majority. The Govern- 
ment, it should be said, did not profess to jus- 
tify the destruction of Kagosima. Their case was 
that Admiral Kuper had to do something ; that 
there was nothing he could very well do when he 
had been fired upon but to bombard the town ; 
and that the burning of the town was an accident 
of the conflict for which neither he nor they could 
be held responsible. Satsuma finally submitted 
and paid the money, and promised justice. But 
there were more murders and more bombardings 
yet before we came to anything like an abiding 
settlement with Japan ; and Japan itself was not 
far off a revolution, the most sudden, organic, and 
to all appearance complete that has ever yet been 
seen in the history of nations. 

In the mean time, however, our Government 
became involved iu liabilities more perilous than 
any disputes in Eastern or Southern islands could 
bring on them. An insurrection of a very serious 
kind broke out in Poland. It was provoked by 
the attempt of the Russian Government to choke 
off the patriotic movement which was going on 
in Poland by pressing into the military ranks all 
the young men in the cities who could by any 
possibility be supposed to have any sympathy 
with it. The young men who could escape fled 



to the woods, and there formed themselves into 
armed bands, which gave the Russians great trou- 
ble. The rebels could disperse and come together 
with such ease and rapidity that it was very diffi- 
cult indeed to get any real advantage over them. 
The frontier of Austrian-Poland was very near, 
and the insurgents could cross it, escape from the 
Russian troops, and recross it when they pleased 
to resume their harassing operations. Austria 
was not by any means so unfriendly to the Polish 
patriots as both Russia and Prussia were. Aus- 
tria had come unwillingly into the scheme for 
the partition of Poland, and had got little profit 
by it ; and it was well understood that if the 
other Powers concerned could see their way to 
the restoration of Polish nationality, Austria, for 
her part, would make no objection. Prussia was 
still very much under the dominion of Russia, 
and was prevailed upon or coerced to execute an 
odious convention with Russia, by virtue of which 
the Russian troops were allowed to follow Polish 
insurgents into Prussian territory. 

It was plain from the first that the Poles could 
not under the most favorable circumstances hold 
out long against Russia by virtue of their own 
strength. The idea of the Poles was to keep the in- 
surrection up, by any means and at any risk, until 
some of the great European Powers should be in- 
duced to interfere. Despite the lesson of subse- 
quent events, the Poles were well justified in their 
political calculations. Their hopes were at one 
time on the very eve of being realized. The Em- 
peror Napoleon was eager to move to their aid, 
and Lord Russell was hardly less eager. The 
Polish cause was very popular in England. Rus- 
sia was hated ; Prussia was now hated even more. 
There was no question of party feeling about the 
sympathy with Poland. There were about as 
many Conservatives as Radicals who were ready 
to favor the idea of some effort being made in her 
behalf. Lord Ellenborough spoke up for Poland 
in the House of Lords with poetic and impas- 
sioned eloquence. Lord Shaftesbury from the 
opposite benches denounced the conduct of Rus- 
sia. The Irish Catholic was as ardent for Polish 
liberty as the London artisan. Among its most 
conspicuous and energetic advocates in England 
were Mr. Pope Hennessy, a Catholic and Irish 
member of Parliament ; and Mr. Edmond Beales, 
the leader of a great Radical organization in Lon- 
don. Great public meetings were held, at which 
Russia was denounced and Poland advocated, 
not merely by popular orators, but by men of high 
rank and grave responsibility. War was not 
openly called for at those meetings, or in the 
House of Commons ; but it was urged that Eng- 
land, as one of the Powers which had signed the 
Treaty of Vienna, should join with other States 
in summoning Russia to recognize the rights, such 
as they were, which had been secured to Poland 
by virtue of that treaty. In France the greatest 
enthusiasm prevailed for the cause of Poland. 
The Emperor Napoleon was ready for interven- 
tion if he could get England to join him. Lord 
Russell went so far as to draw up and despatch 
to Russia, in concert with France and Austria, 
a note on the subject of Poland. It urged on 
the attention of the Russian Government six 
points, as the outline of a system of pacification 
for Poland. These were — a complete amnesty ; 
a national representation ; a distinct national ad- 
ministration of Poles for the kingdom of Poland ; 
full liberty of conscience, with the repeal of all 
the restrictions imposed on Catholic worship ; the 
recognition of the Polish language as official ; 
the establishment of a regular system of recruit- 
ing. There was an almost universal impression 
at one moment that, in the event of Russia de- 
clining to accept these recommendations, Eng- 
land, Austria, and France would make war to 
compel her. 

It soon became known, however, that there 
was to be no intervention. Lord Palmerston 
put a stop to the whole idea. It was not that 
he sympathized with Russia. But Lord Palmer- 
ston had by this time grown into a profound dis- 
trust of the Emperor Napoleon. He was con- 
vinced that the Emperor was stirring in the 
matter chiefly with the hope of getting an op- 
portunity of establishing himself in the Rhine 
provinces of Prussia, on the pretext of compelling 



Prussia to remain neutral in the struggle, or of 
punishing her if she took the side of Russia. 
Lord Palmerston would have nothing to do with 
a proposal of the Emperor for an identical note 
to be addressed to Prussia on the subject of the 
convention with Russia. After a while it became 
known that England had decided not to join in 
any project for armed intervention ; and from 
that moment Russia became merely contemptu- 
ous. The Emperor of the French would not 
and could not take action singlehanded ; and 
Prince Gortschakoft' politely told Lord Russell 
that England had really better mind her own 
business and not encourage movements in Poland 
which were simply the work of "cosmopolitan 
revolution." After this Austria did not allow 
her frontier line to be made any longer a basis 
of operations against Russia. The insurrection 
was flung wholly on its own resources. It was 
kept up gallantly and desperately for a time, but 
the end was certain. The Russians carried out 
their measures of pacification with an unflinch- 
ing hand. Floggings, and shootings, and hang- 
ings of women as well as of men were in full 
vigor. Droves of prisoners were sent to Siberia. 
Poland was crushed. The intervention of Eng- 
land had only harmed Poland. It had been 
carried just far enough to irritate the oppressor, 
and not far enough to be of the slightest benefit 
to the oppressed. 

The effect of the policy pursued by England in 
this case was to bring about a certain coldness 
between the Emperor Napoleon and the English 
Government. This fact was made apparent 
some little time after, when the dispute between 
Denmark and the Germanic Confederation came 
up in relation to the Schleswig-Holstein succes- 
sion. Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg were 
Duchies attached to Denmark. Holstein and 
Lauenburg were purely German in nationality, 
and a large proportion of the population of Schles- 
wig, much the larger proportion in the southern 
districts, were German. There can be no doubt 
that the heart of the German people was deeply 
interested in the condition of the Schleswigers 
and Holsteiners. It was only natural that a 
great people should have been unwilling to see 
so many of their countrymen, on the very edge 
of Germany itself, kept under the rule of the 
Danish King. In truth, the claims of Germany 
and Denmark were irreconcilable. Put into plain 
words, the dispute was between Denmark, which 
wanted to make the Duchies Danish, and Ger- 
many, which wanted to have them German. 

The affairs of Prussia were now in the hands 
of a strong man, one of the strongest men mod- 
ern times have known. Daring, unscrupulous, 
and crafty as Cavour, Bismarck was even already 
able to wield a power which had never been 
within Cavour's reach. The public intelligence 
of Europe had not yet recognized the marvellous 
combination of qualities which was destined to 
make their owner famous, and to prove a dis- 
solving force in the settled systems of Germany, 
and indeed of the whole European continent. 
As yet the general opinion of the world set down 
Herr von Bismarck as simply a fanatical reac- 
tionary, a combination of bully and buffoon. 
The Schleswig-Holstein Question became, how- 
ever, a very serious one for Denmark when it 
was taken up by Bismarck. From first to last 
the mind of Bismarck was evidently made up 
that the Duchies should be annexed to Prussia. 
War became certain. Austria and Prussia en- 
tered into joint agreements for the purpose, and 
Denmark, one of the smallest and weakest king- 
doms in the world, found herself engaged in con- 
flict with Austria and Prussia combined. The 
little Danish David had defied two Goliaths to 
combat at one moment. 

Were the Danes and their Sovereign and their 
Government mad ? Not at all. They well knew 
that they could not hold out alone against the 
two German Great Powers. But they counted 
on the help of Europe, and especially of England. 
Lord Russell, in multitudinous despatches, had 
very often given the Danish Government sound 
and sensible advice. He had declared that if 
Denmark did not follow England's advice, Eng- 
land would not come to her assistance in case 
she were attacked by the Germans. Denmark 



A SHORT HISTORY OB" OUR OWN TIMES. 



interpreted this as an assurance that if she fol- 
lowed England's counsels she might count on 
England's protection, and she insisted that she 
had strictly followed England's counsels for this 
very reason. When the struggle seemed ap- 
proaching Lord Falmerston said, in the House 
of Commons, at the close of a session, that if any 
violent attempt were made to overthrow the 
rights and interfere with the independence of 
Denmark, those who made the attempt would 
find in the result that it would not he Denmark 
alone with which they would have to contend. 
These words were afterwards explained as in- 
tended to be merely prophetic, and to indicate 
Lord Palmerston 's private belief that in the event 
of Denmark being invaded, France, or Russia, 
or some State somewhere, would probably be 
generous enough to come to the assistance of the 
Danes. But when the words were spoken it did 
not occur to the mind of any one to interpret 
them in such a sense. Every one believed that 
Lord Falmerston was answering on behalf of 
the English Government and the English people. 
The Danes counted with confidence on the 
help of England. They refused to accept the 
terms which Germany would have imposed. 
They prepared for war. Fublic opinion in Eng- 
land was all but unanimous in favor of Den- 
mark. Five out of every six persons were for 
England's drawing the sword in her cause at 
once. Five out of every six of the small minor- 
ity who were against war were nevertheless in 
sympathy with the Danes. Many reasons com- 
bined to bring about this condition of national 
feeling. Austria was not popular in England ; 
Prussia was detested. The Prince of Wales had 
been married to the Princess Alexandra, the 
daughter of the King of Denmark, on March 10, 
1863. She was not a Dane, but her family had 
now come to rule in Denmark, and she became 
in that sense a Danish princess. Her youth, her 
beauty, her goodness, her sweet and winning 
ways, had made her more popular than any for- 
eign princess ever before was known to be in 
England. It seemed even to some who ought 
to have had more judgment that the virtues and 
charms of the Princess Alexandra, and the fact 
that she was now Princess of Wales, supplied 
ample proof of the justice of the Danish cause, 
and of the duty of Kngland to support it in arms. 
Not small, therefore, was the disappointment 
spread over the country when it was found that 
the Danes were left alone to their defence, and 
that England was not to put out a hand to help 
them. Lord Russell was willing at one moment 
to intervene by arms in support of Denmark if 
France would join with England, and he made 
a proposal of this kind to the French Govern- 
ment. The Emperor Napoleon refused to inter- 
fere. He had been hurt by England's refusal 
to join with him in sustaining Poland against 
Russia, and now was his time to make a return. 
There was absolutely nothing for it but to leave 
the Danes to fight out their battle in the best 
way they could. 

The Danes fought with a great deal of spirit ; 
but they were extravagantly outnumbered, and 
their weapons were miserably unfit to contend 
against their powerful enemies. The Prussian 
Deedle-gun came into play with terrible effect in 
the campaign, and it soon made all attempts at 
resistance on the part of the Danes utterly hope- 
less. The Danes lost their ground and their 
fortresses. They won one little fight on the sea, 
defeating some Austrian vessels in the German 
Ocean off Heligoland. The news was received 
with wild enthusiasm in England. Its announce- 
ment in the House of Commons drew down the 
unwonted manifestation of a round of applause 
from the Strangers' Gallery. But the struggle 
had ceased to be anything like a serious cam- 
paign. The English Government kept up active 
negotiations on behalf of peace, and at length 
succeeded in inducing the belligerents to agree 
to a suspension of arms, in order that a Confer- 
ence of the Great Powers might be held in Lon- 
don. The deliberations of the Conference came 
to nothing. Curiously enough the final rejec- 
tion of all compromise came from the Danes. 
The war broke out again. The renewed hos- 
tilities lasted, however, but a short time. The 



Danish Government sent Prince John of Den- 
mark direct to Berlin to negotiate for peace, and 
terms of peace were easily arranged. Nothing 
could be more simple. Denmark gave up every- 
thing she had been fighting for, and agreed to 
bear part of the expense which had been entailed 
upon the German Powers by the task of chastis- 
ing her. The Duchies were surrendered to the 
disposal of the Allies. A new war was to settle 
the ownership of the Duchies, and some much 
graver questions of German interest at the same 
time. 

It was obviously impossible that the conduct 
of the English Government should pass unchal- 
lenged. Accordingly, in the two Houses of 
Parliament notices were given of a vote of cen- 
sure on the Government. Lord Malmesbury, 
in Lord Derby's absence, proposed the resolu- 
tion in the House of Lords, and it was carried 
by a majority of nine. The Government made 
little account of that; the Lords always had a 
Tory majority. In the House of Commons, 
however, the matter was much more serious. 
On July 4, 1864, Mr. Disraeli himself moved the 
resolution condemning the conduct of the Gov- 
ernment. The resolution invited the House to 
express its regret that "while the course pursued 
by her Majesty's Government has failed to main- 
tain their avowed policy of upholding the integ- 
rity and independence of Denmark, it has lowered 
the just influence of this country in the capitals 
of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities 
for peace." Mr. Disraeli's speech was ingenious 
and telling. The Government did not make 
any serious attempts to justify all they had done. 
They were glad to seize upon the opportunity 
offered by an amendment which Mr. Kinglake 
proposed, and which merely declared the satis- 
faction with which the House had learned "that 
at this conjuncture her Majesty had been advised 
to abstain from armed intervention in the war 
now going on between Denmark and the German 
Powers." This amendment, it will be seen at 
once, did not meet the accusations raised by Mr. 
Disraeli. It simply asserted that the House was, 
at all events, glad to hear there was to be no in- 
terference in the war. Lord Palmerston, how- 
ever, had an essentially practical way of looking 
at every question. He was of opinion, with 
O'Connell, that, after all, the verdict is the thing. 
He knew he could not get the verdict on the par- 
ticular issues raised by Mr. Disraeli, but he was 
in good hope that he could get it on the policy 
of his administration generally. 

His speech closing the debate was a master- 
piece, not of eloquence, not of political argument, 
but of practical Parliamentary tactics. He spoke, 
as was his fashion, without, the aid of a single 
note. It was a wonderful spectacle that of the 
man of eighty thus in the growing morning 
pouring out his unbroken stream of easy, effective 
eloquence. He dropped the particular questions 
connected with the vote of censure almost im- 
mediately, and went into a long review of the 
whole policy of his administration. He spoke 
as if the resolution before the House were a pro- 
posal to impeach the Government for the entire 
course of their domestic policy. He passed in 
triumphant review all the splendid feats which 
Mr. Gladstone had accomplished in the reduc- 
tion of taxation ; he took credit for the commer- 
cial treaty with France, and for other achieve- 
ments in which at the time of their accomplish- 
ment he had hardly even affected to feel an in- 
terest. He spoke directly at the economical Lib- 
erals, the men who were for sound finance and 
freedom of international commerce. The regu- 
lar Opposition, as he well knew, would vote 
against him; the regular supporters of the Min- 
istry would vote for him. Nothing could alter 
the course to be taken by either of these parties. 
The advanced Liberals, the men whom possibly 
Palmerston in his heart rather despised as calcula- 
tors and economists — these might be affected one 
way or the other by the manner in which he ad- 
dressed himself to the debate. To these and 
at these he spoke. He knew that Mr. Gladstone 
was the one leading man in the Ministry whom 
they regarded with full trust and admiration, 
and on Mr. Gladstone's exploits he virtually 
rested his case. His speech said in plain words : 



" If you vote for this resolution proposed by Mr. 
Disraeli you turn Mr. Gladstone out of office; 
you give the Tories, who understand nothing 
about Free Trade, and who opposed the French 
Commercial Treaty, an opportunity of marring 
all that he has made." Some of Lord Palmer- 
ston's audience were a little impatient now and 
then. " What has all this to do with the ques- 
tion before the House?" was murmured from 
more than one bench. It had everything to do 
with the question that was really before the 
House. That question was, "Shall Palmerston 
remain in office, or shall he go out and the Tories 
come in?" When the division was taken Lord 
Palmerston was saved by a majority of eighteen. 
It was not a very brilliant victory : there were 
not many votes to spare. But it was a victory. 
The Conservative miss by a foot was as good for 
Lord Palmerston as a miss by a mile. It gave 
him a secure tenure of office for the rest of his 
life. Such as it was, the victory was won main- 
ly by his own skill, energy, and astuteness, by the 
ready manner in which he evaded the question 
actually in debate, and rested his claim to ac- 
quittal on services which no one proposed to dis- 
parage. 

That was the last great speech made by Lord 
Palmerston. That was the last great occasion 
on which he was called upon to address the 
House of Commons. The effort was worthy of 
the emergency, and, at least in an artistic sense, 
deserved success. The speech exactly served its 
purpose. It had no brilliant passages. It had 
no hint of an elevated thought. It did not 
trouble itself with any profession of exalted pur- 
pose or principle. It did not contain a single 
sentence that any one would care to remember 
after the emergency had passed away. But it 
did for Lord Palmerston what great eloquence 
might have failed to do ; what a great orator by 
virtue of his very genius and oratorical instincti 
might only have marred. It took captive the 
wavering minds, and it carried the division. 

One cannot study English politics, even in the 
most superficial way, without being struck by 
the singular regularity with which they are gov- 
erned by the law of action and reaction. The 
succession of ebb and flow in the tides is not 
more regular and more certain. A season of 
political energy is sure to come after a season 
of political apathy. The movement of reaction 
against Reform in domestic policy was in full 
force during the earlier years of Lord Palmer- 
ston's Government. In home politics, and where 
finance and commercial legislation were not con- 
cerned, Palmerston was a Conservative Minister. 
He was probably on the whole more highly es- 
teemed among the rank and file of the Opposi- 
tion in the House of Commons than by the rank 
and file on his own side. Not a few of the Con- 
servative country gentlemen would in their hearts 
have been glad if he could have remained Prime- 
minister for ever. Many of those who voted, 
with their characteristic fidelity to party, for 
Mr. Disraeli's resolution of censure were glad in 
their hearts that Lord Palmerston came safely 
out of the difficulty. But as the years went on 
there were manifest signs of the coining and in- 
evitable reaction. One of the most striking of 
these indications was found in the position taken 
by Mr. Gladstone. For some time Mr. Glad- 
stone had been more and more distinctly identi- 
fying himself with the opinions of the advanced 
Liberals. The advanced Liberals themselves 
were of two sections or fractions, working to- 
gether almost always, but very distinct in com- 
plexion ; and it was Mr. Gladstone's fortune to 
be drawn by his sympathies to both alike. He 
was of course drawn towards the Manchester 
School by his economic views ; by Ins agreement 
with them on nil subjects relating to finance and 
to freedom of commerce. But the Manchester 
Liberals were for non-intervention in foreign 
politics; and they carried this into their sympa- 
thies as well as into their principles. The other 
section of the advanced Liberals were sometimes 
even ffightily eager in their sympathies with the 
Liberal movements of the Continent. Mr. Glad- 
stone was in communion with the movements of 
foreign Liberals, as he was with those of English 
Free-traders and economists. He was therefore 



5G 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



qualified to stand between both sections of the 
advanced Liberals of England, and give one hand 
to each. During the debates on Italian questions 
of 1860 and 1861 lie had identified himself with 
the cause of Italian unit}' and independence. 

In the year 1861 Garibaldi came on a visit to 
England, and was received in London with an 
outburst of enthusiasm the like whereof had not 
been seen since Kossuth first passed down 
Cheapside, and perhaps was not seen even then. 
At first the leading men of nearly all parties 
held aloof except Mr. Gladstone. He was 
among the very first and most cordial in his 
welcome to Garibaldi. Then the Liberal leaders 
in general thought they had better consult for 
their popularity by taking Garibaldi up. Then 
the Conservative leaders too began to think it 
would never do for them to hold back when the 
prospect of a general election was so closely 
overshadowing them, and they plunged into the 
Garibaldi welcome. The peerage then rushed 
at Garibaldi. The crowd in the streets were 
perfectly sincere, some acclaiming Garibaldi be- 
cause they had a vague knowledge that he had 
done brave deeds somewhere, and represented 
a cause; others, perhaps the majority, because 
they assumed that he was somehow opposed 
to the Pope. The leaders of society were for 
the most part not sincere. The whole thing 
ended in a quarrel between the aristocracy and 
the democracy ; and Garibaldi was got back to 
his island somehow. Mr. Gladstone was one 
of the few among the leaders who were un- 
doubtedly sincere, and the course he took made 
him a great favorite with the advanced Radi- 
cals. 

Mr. Gladstone had given other indications of 
a distinct tendency to pass over altogether from 
Conservatism, and even from Peelism, into the 
ranks of the Radical Reformers. On May 11, 
1864, a private member brought on a motion in 
the House of Commons for the reduction of the 
borough franchise from £10 rental to £6. Dur- 
ing the debate that followed Mr. Gladstone made 
a remarkable declaration. He contended that the 
burden of proof rested upon those "who would 
exclude forty-nine fiftieths of the working-classes 
from the franchise •■" " it is for them to show 
the unwortbiness, the incapacity, and the mis- 
conduct of the working-class." "I say," he re- 
peated, "that every man who is not presum- 
ably incapacitated by some consideration of per- 
sonal unfitness or political danger is morally en- 
titled to come within the pale of the constitu- 
tion." The bill was rejected, but the speech of 
Mr. Gladstone gave an importance to the de- 
bate and to the occasion which it would not be 
easy to overrate. The position taken up by all 
Conservative minds, no matter to which side of 
politics their owners belonged, had been that the 
claim must be made out for those seeking an 
extension of the suffrage in their favor ; that 
they must show imperative public need, im- 
mense and clear national and political advan- 
tage, to justify the concession; that the mere 
fact of their desire and fitness for the franchise 
ought not to count for anything in the consider- 
ation. Mr. Gladstone's way of looking at the 
question created enthusiasm on the one side — 
consternation and anger on the other. Early 
in the following session there was a motion 
introduced by Mr. Dilhvyn, a staunch and per- 
severing Reformer, declaring that the position 
of the Irish State Church was unsatisfactory, 
and called for the early attention of her Majes- 
ty's Government. Mr. Gladstone spoke on the 
motion, and drew a contrast between the State 
Church of England and that of Ireland, point- 
ing out that the Irish Church ministered only 
to the religious wants of one-eighth or one-ninth 
of the community amid which it was established. 
The eyes of all Radical Reformers, therefore, 
began to turn to Mr. Gladstone as the future 
Minister of Reform in Church and State. He 
became from the same moment an object of dis- 
trust, and something approaching to detestation, 
in the eyes of all steady-going Conservatives. 

Meanwhile there were many changes taking 
place in the social and political life of England. 
Many eminent men passed away during the 
years that Lord Palmerston held his almost ab- 



solute sway over the House of Commons. One 
man we may mention, in the first instance, al- 
though he was no politician, and his death in no 
wise affected the prospects of parties. The at- 
tention of the English people was called from 
questions of foreign policy and of possible inter- 
vention in the Danish quarrel, by an event which 
happened on the Christmas-eve of 1863. That 
day it became known throughout London that 
the author of "Vanity Fair" was dead. Mr. 
Thackeray died suddenly at the house in Ken- 
sington which he had lately had built for him in 
the fashion of that Queen Anne period which he 
loved and had illustrated so admirably. He was 
still in the very prime of life; no one had ex- 
pected that his career was so soon to close. It 
had not been in any sense a long career. Suc- 
cess had come somewhat late to him, and he was 
left but a short time to enjoy it. He had es- 
tablished himself in the very foremost rank of 
English novelists — with Fielding and Goldsmith 
and Miss Austen and Dickens. He had been a 
literary man and hardly anything else, having 
had little to do with politics or political journal- 
ism. Once, indeed, he was seized with a sudden 
ambition to take a seat in the House of Com- 
mons, and at the general election of 1S57 he 
offered himself as a candidate for the city of 
Oxford in opposition to Mr. Cardwell. He was 
not elected ; and he seemed to accept failure 
cheerfully as a hint that he had better keep to 
literary work for the future. He would go back 
to his author's desk, he said good- humoredly ; 
and he kept his word. It is not likely he would 
have been a parliamentary success. He had no 
gift of speech, and had but little interest in the 
details of party politics. His political views 
were sentiments rather than opinions. It is not 
true that success in Parliament is incompatible 
with literary distinction. Macanlay and Grote, 
and two of Thackeray's own craft, Lord Beacons- 
field and Lord Lytton, may be called as recent 
witnesses to disprove that common impression. 
But these were men who had a distinctly politi- 
cal object, or who loved political life, and were 
only following their star when they sought seats 
in the House of Commons. Thackeray had no 
such vocation, and would have been as much out 
of place in parliamentary debate as a painter or 
a musician. He had no need to covet parlia- 
mentary reputation. As it was well said when 
the news of his defeat at Oxford reached Lon- 
don, the Houses of Lords and Commons together 
could not have produced "Barry Lyndon" and 
" Pendennis." His early death was a source 
not only of national but of world-wide regret. 
It eclipsed the Christmas gayety of nations. If 
Thackeray died too soon, it was only too soon 
for his family and bis friends. His fame was se- 
cure. He could hardly, with any length of years, 
have added a cubit to his literary stature. 

A whole group of statesmen had passed pre- 
maturely away. Sir James Graham had died 
after several years of a quiet career ; still a celeb- 
rity in the House of Commons, but not much in 
the memory of the public outside it. One, of his 
latest speeches in Parliament was on the Chinese 
war of 1860. On the last day of the session of 
1861, and when almost all the other members 
had left the House, he remained for a while talk- 
ing with a friend and former colleague, and as 
they were separating Sir James Graham ex- 
pressed a cheery hope that they should meet on 
the first day of the next session in the same 
place. But Graham died in the following Octo- 
ber. Sidney Herbert had died a few months be- 
fore in the same year. Sidney Herbert had been 
raised to the peerage as Lord Herbert of Lea. 
He had entered the House of Lords because his 
breaking health rendered it impossible for him to 
stand the wear and tear of life in the Commons, 
and he loved politics and public affairs, and 
could not be induced to renounce them and live 
in quiet. He was a man of great gifts, and was 
looked upon as a prospective Prime- minister. 
He had a graceful and gracious bearing ; lie was 
an able administrator, and a very skilful and per- 
suasive debater. He never declaimed ; never 
even tried to be what is commonly called elo- 
quent ; but his sentences came out with a singu- 
larly expressive combination of force and ease, 



every argument telling, every stroke having the 
lightness of an, Eastern champion's sword-play. 

He had high social station, and was in every way 
fitted to stand at the head of English public af- 
fairs. He was but fifty-one years of age when 
he died. The country for some time looked on 
Sir George Lewis as a man likely to lead an ad- 
ministration ; but he, too, passed away before 
his natural time. He died two years after Sir 
James Graham and Sidney Herbert, and was only- 
some fifty-seven years old at bis death. Lord 
Elgin was dead and Lord Canning ; and Lord 
Dalhousie had been some years dead. The 
Duke of Newcastle died in 1861. Nor must we 
omit to mention the death of Cardinal Wiseman 
on February 15, 1865. Cardinal Wiseman had 
outlived the popular clamor once raised against 
him in England. There was a time when his 
name would have set all the pulpit-drums of no- 
Popery rattling; he came, at length, to be re- 
spected and admired everywhere in England as 
a scholar and a man of ability. He was a 
devoted ecclesiastic, whose zeal for his Church 
was his honor, and whose earnest labor in the 
work he was set to do had shortened his busv 
life. 

During the time from the first outbreak of the 
Civil War in the United States to its close all 
these men were removed from the scene, and the 
Civil War was hardly over when Richard Cobden 
was quietly laid in an English country church- 
yard. Mr. Cobden paid a visit to his constitu- 
ents of Rochdale in November, 1864, and spoke 
to a great public meeting on public affairs, and 
he did not appear to have lacked any of his usual 
ease and energy. This was Cobden's last speech. 
He did not come up to London until the March 
of 1865, and the day on which he travelled was 
so bitterly cold that the bronchial affection from 
which he was suffering became cruelly aggra- 
vated. He sank rapidly, and on April 2 he died. 
The scene in the House of Commons next even- 
ing was very touching. Lord Palmerston and 
Mr. Disraeli both spoke of Cobden with genuine 
feeling and sympathy; but Mr. Bright's few and 
broken words were as noble an epitaph as friend- 
ship could wish for the grave of a great and a 
good man. 

The Liberal party found themselves approach- 
ing a general election, with their ranks thinned 
by many severe losses. The Government had 
lost one powerful member by an event other than 
death. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Westbury, 
had resigned his office in consequence of a vote 
of the House of Commons. Lord Westbury had 
made many enemies. He was a man of great 
capacity and energy, into whose nature the scorn 
of forms and of lesser intelligences entered far 
too freely. His character was somewhat want- 
ing in the dignity of moral elevation. He had a 
tongue of marvellous bitterness. His sarcastic 
power was probably unequalled in the House of 
Commons while he sat there ; and when he came 
into the House of Lords he fairly took away the 
breath of stately and formal peers by the unspar- 
ing manner in which he employed his most dan- 
gerous gift. His style of cruel irony was made 
all the more effective by the peculiar suavity of 
the tone in which he gave out his sarcasms and 
his epithets. With a face that only suggested 
soft, bland benevolence, with eyes half closed as 
those of a mediaeval saint, and in accents of sub- 
dued, mellifluous benignity, the Lord Chancellor 
was wont to pour out a stream of irony that 
corroded like some deadly acid. Such a man 
was sure to make enemies ; and the time came 
when, in the Scriptural sense, they found him 
out. He had been lax in his manner of using 
his patronage. In one case he had allowed an 
official of the House of Lords to retire, and to 
receive a retiring pension, while a grave charge 
connected with his conduct in another public 
office was, to Lord Westbury's knowledge, im- 
pending over him ; and Lord Westbury had ap- 
pointed his own son to the place thus vacated. 
Thus at first sight it naturally appeared that 
Lord Westbury had sanctioned the pensioning 
off of a public servant, against whom a serious 
charge was still awaiting decision, in order that 
a place might be found for the Lord Chancellor's 
own son. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



The question was taken up by the House of 
Commons, and somewhat unfortunately taken 
up in the first instance by a strong political 
opponent of the Government. On July 3, 1865, 
Mr. Ward Hunt moved a distinct vote of censure 
on the Lord Chancellor. The House did not 
agree to the resolution, which would have branded 
the Lord Chancellor's conduct as " highly repre- 
hensible, and calculated to throw discredit on the 
administration of the high offices of the State." 
It, however, accepted an amendment which, while 
acquitting Lord Westbury of any corrupt motive, 
declared that the granting of the pension showed 
a laxity of practice and want of caution with 
regard to the public interests on the part of the 
Lord Chancellor. The Government were not 
able to resist this resolution. Lord Palmerston 
made the best effort he could to save the Lord 
Chancellor; but the common feeling of the House 
held that the words of the amendment were not 
too strong ; and the Government had to bow to 
it. The Lord Chancellor immediately resigned 
his office. No other course was fairly open to 
him. The Government lost a man of singular 
ability and energy. Many thought, when all was 
done, that he had been somewhat harshly used. 
He would, perhaps, have been greatly surprised 
himself to know how many kindly things were 
said of him. 

The hour of political reaction was evidently 
near at hand. Five years had passed away since 
the withdrawal of Lord John Russell's Keform 
Bill ; and five years may represent in ordinary 
ca'culation the ebb or flow of the political tide. 
The dissolution of Parliament was near. Lord 
Derby described the Speech from the Throne at 
the opening of the session of 1865 as a sort of 
address very proper to be delivered by an aged 
minister to a moribund Parliament. The Parlia- 
ment had run its course. It had accomplished 
the rare fe.--t of living out its days, and having to 
die by simple cfHux of time. On July 6, 1865, 
Parliament was dissolved. 

The first blow was struck in the City of Lon- 
don, and the Liberals carried all the seats. Four 
Liberals were elected. In Westminster the con- 
test was somewhat remarkable. The Constit- 
uency of Westminster always had the generous 
ambition to wish to be represented by at least 
one man of distinction. Mr. Mill was induced to 
come out of his calm retirement in Avignon and 
accept the candidature for Westminster. He is- 
sued an address embodying his well-known po- 
litical opinions. He declined to look after local 
business, and on principle he objected to pay any 
part of the expenses of election. It was felt to 
be a somewhat bold experiment to put forward 
such a man as Mill among the candidates for 
the representation of a popular constituency. 
His opinions were extreme. He was not known 
to belong to any church or religious denomina- 
tion. He was a philosopher, and English polit- 
ical organizations do not love philosophers. 
He was almost absolutely unknown to his coun- 
trymen in general. Until he came forward as 
a leader of the agitation in favor of the North- 
ern Cause during the Civil War, he had never 
so far as we know, been seen on an Eng- 
lish political platform. Even of the electors 
of Westminster, very few had ever seen him 
before his candidature. Many were under the 
vague impression that he was a clever man who 
wrote wise books and died long ago. He was 
not supposed to have any liking or capacity for 
parliamentary life. More than ten years before 
it was known to a few that he had been invited 
to stand for an Irish county and had declined. 
That was at the time when his observations on 
the Irish land tenure system and the condition 
of Ireland generally had filled the hearts of 
many Irishmen with delight and wonder — de- 
light and wonder to find that a cold English 
philosopher and economist should form such 
just and generous opinions about Irish ques- 
tions, and should express them with such a no- 
ble courage. Since that time he had not been 
supposed to have any inclination for public lit'' : 
nor, we believe, had any serious effort been made 
to tempt him out of his retirement. The idea 
now occurred to Mr. James Heal, a popular West- 
minster politician, and he pressed it so earnestly 



on Mill as a public duty that Mill did not feel 
at liberty to refuse. Mill was one of the few 
men who have only to be convinced that a thing 
is incumbent on them as a public duty to set 
about doing it forthwith, no matter how distaste- 
ful it might be to them personally, or what ex- 
cellent excuses they might offer for leaving the 
duty to others. He had written things wdiich 
might well make him doubtful about the pru- 
dence of courting the suffrages of an English 
popular constituency, lie was understood to 
be a rationalist; he was a supporter of many 
political opinions that seemed to ordinary per- 
sons much like crotchets or even crazes. He 
had once said in his writings that the working 
classes in England were given to lying. He had 
now to stand up on platforms before crowded 
and noisy assemblies where everything he had 
ever written or said could be made the subject 
of question and of accusation, and with enemies 
outside capable of torturing every explanation 
to his disadvantage. A man of independent 
opinions, and who has not been ashamed to 
change his opinions when he thought them 
wrong, or afraid to put on record each opinion 
in the time when he held to it, is at much dis- 
advantage on the hustings. He will find out 
there what it is to have written books and to 
have enemies. Mill triumphed over all the 
difficulties by downright courage and honesty. 
When asked at a public meeting, chiefly com- 
posed of working-men, whether he had ever said 
the working-classes were given to lying, he an- 
swered straight out, "I did;" a bold, blunt ad- 
mission without any qualification. The bold- 
ness and frankness of the reply struck home 
to the manhood of the working-men who lis- 
tened to him. Here they saw a leader who 
would never shrink from telling them the truth. 
They greeted his answer with vehement ap- 
plause, and Mr. Mill was returned to Parlia- 
ment by a majority of some hundreds over the 
Conservative competitor. 

In many other instances there was a marked 
indication that the political tide had turned in 
favor of Liberal opinions. Mr. Thomas Hughes, 
author of "Tom Brown's Schooldays," was re- 
turned for Lambeth. Mr. Duncan M'Laren, 
brother-in-law of Mr. Bright, and an advanced 
Radical, was elected for Edinburgh, unseating 
a mild Whig. Mr. G. O. Trevelyan, a brilliant 
young Radical, nephew of Macaulay, came into 
Parliament. In Ireland some men of strong 
opinions, of ahility and of high character found 
seats in the House of Commons for the first 
time. One of these was Mr. J. B. Dillon, a man 
who had been concerned in the Irish Rebellion 
of 1848. Mr. Dillon had lived for some years 
in the United States, and had lately returned 
to Ireland under an amnesty. He at once re- 
assumed a leading part in Irish politics, and 
won a high reputation for his capacity and his 
integrity. He promised to have an influential 
part in bringing together the Irish members and 
the English Radicals, but his untimely death 
cut short what would unquestionably have been 
a very useful career. Wherever there was a 
change in the character of the new Parliament 
it seemed to be in favor of advanced Reform. 
It was not merely that the Tories were left in a 
minority, but that so many mild Whigs had been 
removed to give place to genuine Liberals. Mr. 
Disraeli himself spoke of the new Parliament, 
as one which had distinctly increased the 
strength and the following of Mr. Bright. 
No one could fail to see, he pointed out, that 
Mr. Bright occupied a very different position 
now from that which he had held in the late 
Parliament. New men had come into the House 
of Commons, men of integrity and ahility, who 
were above all things advanced Reformers. 
The position of Mr. Gladstone was markedly 
changed. He had been defeated at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, hut 
was at once put in nomination I'm- South Lan- 
cashire, which was still open, and he was elected 
there. His severance from the University was 
regarded by the Liberals as his political eman- 
cipation. The Reformers then would have at 
their head the two great Parliamentary orators 
(one of them undoubtedly the future Prime- 



minister), and the philosophical writer and think- 
er of the day. This Liberal triumvirate, as they 
were called, would have behind them many new 
and earnest men to whom their words would 
be a law. The alarmed Tories said to them- 
selves that between England and the democratic 
flood there was left but one barrier, and that 
was in the person of the old statesman now in 
his eighty- first year, of whom more and more 
doubtful rumors began to arrive in London 
every day. 

Down in Hertfordshire Lord Palmerston was 
dying. Long as his life was, if counted by mere 
years, it seems much longer still when we con- 
sider wdiat it had compassed, and how active it 
had been from the earliest to the very end. 
Many men were older than Lord Palmerston ; 
he left more than one senior behind him. But 
they were for the most part men whose work had 
long been done ; men wdio had been consigned 
to the arm-chair of complete inactivity. Pal- 
merston was a hard-working statesman until 
within a very few days of his death. He had 
been a member of Parliament for nearly sixty 
years. He entered Parliament for the first time 
in the year when Byron, like himself a Harrow 
boy, published bis first poems. He had been in 
the House of Commons for thirty years when 
the Queen came to the throne. During all his 
political career he was only out of office for rare 
and brief seasons. 

It was only during the session of 1865 that 
Lord Palmerston began to give evidence that he 
was suffering severely at last from that affliction 
wdiich has been called the most terrible of all 
diseases — old age. Up to the beginning of that 
year he had, despite his occasional fits of gout, 
scarcely shown any signs of actual decay. But 
during the session of 1865 Lord Palmerston suf- 
fered much for some of the later months. His 
eyesight had become very weak, and even with 
the help of strong glasses he found it difficult to 
read. He was getting feeble in every way. He 
ceased to have that joy of the strife which in- 
spired him during Parliamentary debate even up 
to the attainment of his eightieth year. He had 
kept up his bodily vigor and the youthful elastic- 
ity of his spirits so long, that it must have come 
on him with the shock of a painful surprise when 
he first found that his frame and his nerves were 
beyond doubt giving way. and that he too must 
succumb to the cruel influence of years. The 
collapse of his vigor came on almost at a stroke. 
Lord Palmerston began to discontinue his at- 
tendances at the House ; when he did attend, it 
was evident that he went through his Parlia- 
mentary duties with difficulty and even with 
pain. The Tiverton election on the dissolution 
of Parliament was his last public appearance. 
He went from Tiverton to Brocket, in Hertford- 
shire, a place which Lady Palmerston had in- 
herited from Lord Melbourne, her brother; and 
there he remained. The gout had become very 
serious now. It had flown to a dangerous place; 
and Lord Palmerston had made the danger 
greater by venturing, with his too youthful ener- 
gy, to ride out before he had nearly recovered 
from one severe attack. On October 17 a bul- 
letin was issued, announcing that Lord Palmer- 
ston had been seriously ill, in consequence of 
having taken cold, but that he hail been steadily 
improving for three days, and was then much 
better. Somehow this announcement failed to 
reassure people in London. Many had only then 
for the first time heard that Palmerston was ill, 
and the bare mention of the fact fell ominously 
on the ear of the public. The very next morn- 
ing these suspicions were confirmed. It was an- 
nounced that Lord Palmerston's condition had 
suddenly altered for the worse, and that he was 
gradually sinking. Then every one knew that 
the end was near. There was no surprise when 
the news came next day that Palmerston was 
dead. He died on October 18. Had he only 
lived two days longer he would have completed 
his eighty-first year. He was buried in West- 
minster Abbey with public honors on October 
27. No man since the death of the Duke of 
Wellington had filled SO conspicuous a place in 
the public mind. No man had enjoyed anything 
like the same amount of popularity. He died 



58 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



at the moment when that popularity had readied 
its very zenith. It had become the fashion of 
the day to praise all he said and all he did. It 
was the settled canon of the ordinary English- 
man's faith that what Palmerston said England 
must feel. To stand forward as the opponent, 
or even the critic, of anything done or favored 
by him was to be unpopular and unpatriotic. 
Lord Palmerston had certainly lived long enough 
in years, in enjoyment, in fame. 

The regret for Palmerston was very general 
and very genuine. Privately, he can hardly 
have had any enemies. He had a kindly heart, 
which won on all people who came near him. 
He had no enduring enmities or capricious dis- 
likes ; and it was therefore very hard for ill-feel- 
ing to live in his beaming, friendly presence. 
He never disliked men merely because he had 
often to encounter them in political war. He 
tried his best to give them as good as they 
brought, and he bore no malice. There were 
some men whom he disliked, but they were men 
who for one reason or another stood persistently 
in his way, and who he fancied he had reason 
to believe had acted treacherously towards him. 
His manners were frank and genial rather than 
polished ; and his is one of* the rare instances in 
which a man contrived always to keep up his 
personal dignity without any stateliness of bear- 
ing and tone. He was a model combatant ; 
when the combat was over, he was ready to sit 
down by his antagonist's side and be his friend, 
and talk over their experiences and exploits. 
He was absolutely free from affectation. This 
very fact gave, sometimes, an air almost of rough- 
ness to his manners, he could be so plain-spoken 
and downright when suddenly called on to ex- 
press his mind. Personally truthful and honor- 
able of course it would be superfluous to pro- 
nounce him. But Palmerston was too often 
willing to distinguish between the personal and 
the political integrity of a statesman. The 
gravest errors of this kind which Palmerston had 
committed were committed for an earlier gen- 
eration. The general public of 1865 took small 
account of them. Not many would have cared 
much then about the grim story of Sir Alexan- 
der Barnes's despatches, or the manner in which 
Palmerston had played with the hopes of foreign 
Liberalism, conducting it, more than once, rather 
to its grave than to its triumph. These things 
lived only in the minds of a few at the time wiien 
the news of his death came, and even of that few 
not many were anxious to dwell upon them. 

Lord Palmerston is not to be judged by his 
domestic policy. Palmerston was himself only 
in the Foreign Office and in the House of Com- 
mons. In both alike the recognition of his true 
capacity came very late. His Parliamentary 
training had been perfected before its success 
was acknowledged. He was theref6re able to 
use his faculties at any given moment to their 
fullest stretch. He could always count on them. 
They had been so well drilled by long practice 
that they would instantly come at call. He 
understood the moods of the House of Commons 
to perfection. He could play upon those moods 
as a performer does upon the keys of an instru- 
ment. He saw what men were in the mood to 
do, and he did it ; and they were clear that that 
must be a great leader who led them just whither 
they felt inclined to go. Much earnestness he 
knew bored the House, and he took care never 
to be much in earnest. He left it to others to 
be eloquent. Lord Palmerston never cared to 
go deeper in his speeches than the surface in 
everything. He had no splendid phraseology ; 
and probably would not have cared to make any 
display of splendid phraseology, even if he had 
the gift. No speech of his would be read except 
for the present interest of the subject. No pas- 
sages from Lord Palmerston are quoted by any- 
body. He always selected, and doubtless by a 
kind of instinct, not the arguments which were 
most logically cogent, but those which were most 
likely to suit the character and the temper of the 
audience he happened to be addressing. He 
spoke for his hearers, not for himself; to affect 
the votes of those to whom he was appealing, not 
for the sake of expressing any deep, irrepress- 
ible convictions of his own. He never talked 



over the heads of his audience, or compelled 
them to strain their intellects in order to keep 
pace witli his flights. No other statesman of our 
time could interpose so dexterously just before 
the division to break the effect of some telling 
speech against him, and to bring the House into 
a frame of mind for regarding all that had been 
done by the Opposition as a mere piece of po- 
litical ceremonial, gone through in deference to 
the traditions or the formal necessities of party, 
on which it would be a waste of time to bestow 
serious thought. 

The jests of Lord Palmerston always had a 
purpose in them, and were better adapted to the 
occasion and the moment than the repartees of 
the best debater in the House. At one time, 
indeed, he flung his jests and personalities about 
in somewhat too reckless a fashion, and he made 
many enemies. But of late years, whether from 
growing discretion or kindly feeling, he seldom 
indulged in any pleasantries that could wound or 
offend. During his last Parliament he repre- 
sented to the full the average head and heart of 
a House of Commons singularly # devoid of high 
ambition or steady purpose ; a House peculiarly 
intolerant of eccentricity, especially if it were 
that of genius , impatient of having its feelings 
long strained in any one direction, delighting 
only in ephemeral interests and excitements ; 
hostile to anything which drew heavily on the 
energy or the intelligence. Such a House natu- 
rally acknowledged a heavy debt of gratitude to 
the statesman who never either puzzled or bored 
them. Men who distrusted Mr. Disraeli's an- 
titheses, and were frightened by Mr. Gladstone's 
earnestness, found as much relief in the easy, 
pleasant, straightforward talk of Lord Palmer- 
ston as, a school-boy finds in a game of marbles 
after a problem or a sermon. 

CHAPTER XX. 

THE NEW GOVERNMENT. 

Lord Russell was invited by the Queen to 
form a Government after the death of Lord 
Palmerston. According to some rumors the 
opportunity would be taken to admit the Radical 
element to an influence in the actual councils of 
the nation such as it had never enjoyed before, 
and such as its undoubted strength in Parlia- 
ment and the country now entitled it to have. 
The only changes, however, in the Cabinet were 
that Lord Russell became Prime -minister, 
and that Lord Clarendon, who had been Chan- 
cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, succeeded him 
as Foreign Secretary. One or two new men 
were brought into offices which did not give a 
seat in the Cabinet. Among these were Mr. 
Forster, who became Under-secretary for the Colo- 
nies in the room of Mr. Chichester Fortescue, now 
Irish Secretary, and Mr. Goschen, who succeeded 
Mr. Hutt as Vice-President of the Board of 
Trade. Both Mr. Forster and Mr. Goschen soon 
afterwards came to hold high official position, 
and to have seats in the Cabinet. In each in- 
stance the appointment was a concession to the 
growing Liberal feeling of the day ; but the con- 
cession was slight and cautious. The country 
knew little about either Mr. Forster or Mr. 
Goschen at the time ; and it will easily be imag- 
ined that those who thought a seat in the Cabinet 
for Mr. Bright was due to the people more even 
than to the man, and who had some hopes of 
seeing a similar place offered to Mr. Mill, were 
not satisfied by the arrangement which called 
two comparatively obscure men to unimportant 
office. The outer public did not quite appreciate 
the difficulties which a Liberal minister had to 
encounter in compromising between the Whigs 
and the Radicals. The Whigs included almost 
all the members of the party who were really 
influential by virtue of hereditary rank and noble 
station. It was impossible to overlook their 
claims. Some of the Whigs probably looked 
with alarm enough at the one serious change 
brought about by the death of Lord Palmerston 
— the change which made Mr. Gladstone leader 
of the House of Commons. 

Meanwhile there were some important changes 
in the actual condition of things. The House of 
Commons, elected just before Lord Palmerston's 



death, was in many respects a far different House 
from that which it had been his last ministerial 
act to dissolve. Death had made many changes. 
There were changes, too, not brought about by 
death. The Lord John Russell of the Reform 
Bill had been made a Peer, and sat as Earl 
Russell in the House of Lords. Mr. Lowe, one 
of the ablest and keenest of political critics, who 
had for a while been shut down under the re- 
sponsibilities of office, was a tree lance once more. 
Mr. Lowe, who had before that held office two 
or three times, was Vice-President of the Com- 
mittee of Council on Education from the begin- 
ning of Lord Palmerston's administration until 
April, ISCi. At that time a vote of censure was 
carried against his department, in other words 
against himself, on the motion of Lord Robert 
Cecil, for alleged "mutilation" of reports of the 
Inspectors of Schools, done, as it was urged, in 
order to bring the reports into seeming harmony 
with the educational views entertained by the 
Committee of Council. Lord Robert Cecil intro- 
duced the resolution in a speech singularly bit- 
ter and offensive. The motion was carried by 
a majority of 101 to 93. Mr. Lowe instantly 
resigned his office ; but he did not allow the 
matter to rest there. He obtained the appoint- 
ment of a committee to inquire into the whole 
subject ; and the result of the inquiry was not 
only that Mr. Lowe was entirely exonerated from 
the charge made against him, but that the reso- 
lution of the House of Commons was actually 
rescinded. It is probable, however, that Mr. 
Lowe felt that the Government of which he was 
a member had not given him all the support he 
might have expected. It is certain that if Lord 
Palmerston and his leading colleagues had thrown 
any great energy into their support of him, the 
vote of censure never could have been carried, 
and would not have had to be rescinded. This 
fact was brought back to the memory of many 
not long after, when Mr. Lowe, still an outsider, 
became the very Coriolanus of a sudden move- 
ment against the Reform policy of a Liberal 
Government. On the other hand, Mr. Layard, 
once a daring and somewhat reckless opponent 
of Government and governments, had been bound 
over to the peace, quietly enmeshed in the disci- 
pline of subordinate office. Yet the former fire 
was not wholly gone ; it flamed up again on op- 
portunity given. Perhaps Mr. Layard proved 
most formidable to his own colleagues, when he 
sometimes had to come into the ring to sustain 
their common cause. The old vigor of the pro- 
fessional gladiator occasionally drove him a little 
too heedlessly against the Opposition. So com- 
bative a temperament found it hard to submit 
always to the prosaic rigor of mere fact and the 
proprieties of official decorum. 

The change in the leadership of the House of 
Commons was of course the most remarkable, 
and the most momentous, of the alterations that 
had taken place. From Lord Palmerston, ad- 
mired almost to hero-worship by Whigs and Con- 
servatives, the foremost position had suddenly 
passed to Mr. Gladstone, whose admirers were 
the most extreme of the Liberals, and who was 
distrusted and dreaded by all of Conservative in- 
stincts and sympathies, on the one side of the 
House as well as on the other. Mr. Gladstone 
and Mr. Disraeli were now brought directly face 
to face. One led the House, the other led the 
Opposition. With so many points of difference, 
and even of contrast, there was one slight resem- 
blance in the political situation of Mr. Gladstone 
and Mr. Disraeli. Each was looked on with a 
certain doubt and dread by a considerable num- 
ber of his own followers. It is evident that in 
such a state of things the strategical advantage lay 
with the leader of Opposition. He had not to take 
the initiative in anything, and the least loyal of 
his followers would cordially serve under him in 
any effort to thwart a movement made by the 
Ministry. It came to be seen, however, before 
long that the Conservative leader was able to 
persuade his party to accept those very changes 
against which some of the followers of Mr. Glad- 
stone were found ready to revolt. In order that 
some of the events to follow may not appear very 
mysterious, it is well to bear in mind that the 
formation of the new Ministry under Lord Russell 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



had by no means given all tlie satisfaction to cer- 
tain sections of the Liberal party which they be- 
lieved themselves entitled to expect. Some were 
displeased because the new Government was not 
Radical enough. Some were alarmed because 
they fancied it was likely to go too far for the 
purpose of pleasing the Radicals. Some were 
vexed because men whom they looked up to as 
their natural leaders had not been invited to of- 
fice. A few were annoyed because their own 
personal claims bad been overlooked. One 
thing was certain : the Government must make 
a distinct move of some kind in the direction of 
Reform. So many new and energetic Liberals 
and Radicals had entered the House of Com- 
mons now, that it would be impossible for any 
Liberal Government to hold office on the terms 
which bad of late been conceded to Lord Pal- 
merston. Mr. Gladstone had always been cred- 
ited with a sensitive earnestness of temper which 
was commonly believed to have given trouble to 
bis more worldly and easy-going colleagues in 
the Cabinet of "Lord Falmerston. It was to 
manv people a problem of deep interest to see 
whether the genius of Mr. Gladstone would prove 
equal to the trying task of leadership under cir- 
cumstances of such peculiar difficulty. Tact, 
according to many, was the quality needed for 
the work — not genius. 

Some new men were coming up on both sides 
of the political field. Among these we have al- 
ready mentioned Mr. Forster, who had taken a 
conspicuous part in the debates on the American 
Civil War. Mr. Forster was a man of consid- 
erable Parliamentary aptitude ; a debater who, 
though not pretending to eloquence, was argu- 
mentative, vigorous, and persuasive. He had 
practical knowledge of English politics and social 
affairs, and was thoroughly representative of a 
very solid body of English public opinion. In 
the House of Lords the Duke of Argyll was be- 
ginning to take a prominent and even a leading 
place. The Duke of Argyll would have passed 
as a middle-aged man in ordinary life, but he 
was looked on by many as a sort of boy in poli- 
tics. He had, indeed, begun life very soon. At 
this time he was some forty-three years of age, 
and he had been a prominent public man for 
more than twenty years. The Duke of Argyll, 
then Marquis of Lome, was only nineteen years 
old when he wrote a pamphlet called " Advice 
to the Peers." A little later he engaged in the 
famous struggle concerning the freedom of the 
Church of Scotland, which resulted in the great 
secession headed by Dr. Chalmers, and the foun- 
dation of the Free "Church. He became Duke of 
Argyll on the death of his father in 1847. He 
did battle in the House of Lords as he had done 
out of it. He distinguished himself by plunging 
almost instantaneously into the thick of debate. 
He very much astonished the staid and formal 
peers, who had been accustomed to discussion 
conducted in measured tones, and with awful 
show of deference to age and political standing. 
The Duke of Argyll spoke upon any and every 
subject with astonishing fluency, and without the 
slightest reverence for years and authority. The 
general impression of the House of Lords for a 
long time was that youthful audacity, and nothing 
else, was the chief characteristic of the Duke of 
Argyll ; and for a long time the Duke of Argyll 
did ii good deal to support that impression. After 
a while he began to show that there was more in 
him than self-confidence. The House of Lords 
found that he really knew a good deal, and had 
a wonderfully clear head, and they learned to en- 
dure bis dogmatic and professorial ways; but he 
never grew to be popular amongst them. His 
style was far too self-assured ; his faith in his 
own superiority to everybody else was too evident 
to allow of his" having many enthusiastic admir- 
ers. He soon, however, got into high office. 
With his rank, his talents, and his energy, such 
_a thing was inevitable. He joined the Govern- 
ment of Lord Aberdeen in 1852 as Lord Privy 
Seal, holding an office of dignity, but no special 
•duties, the occupant of which has only to give his 
assistance in council and general debate. He 
was afterwards Postmaster-general for two or 
three years. Under Lord Palmerston, in 1859, 
Ae became Lord Privy Seal again, and he re- 



tained that office in the Cabinet of Lord Rus- j 
sell. 

There were some rising men on the Tory side. 
Sir Hugh Cairns, afterwards Lord Chancellor 
and a peer, had fought his way by sheer talent 
and energy into the front rank of Opposition. 
A lawyer from Belfast, and the son of middle- 
class parents, he had risen into celebrity and in- 
fluence while yet he was in the very prime of 
life. He was a lawyer whose knowledge of his 
own craft might fairly be called profound. He 
was one of the most effective debaters in Parlia- 
ment. His resources of telling argument were 
almost inexhaustible, and his training at the Bat- 
gave him the faculty of making the best at the 
shortest notice of all the facts be was able to bring 
to bear on any question of controversy. He 
showed more than once that he was capable of 
pouring out an animated and even a passionate 
invective. An orator in the highest sense he cer- 
tainly was not. No gleam of imagination soften- 
ed or brightened his lithe and nervous logic. 
No deep feeling animated and inspired it. His 
speeches were arguments, not eloquence ; instru- 
ments, not literature. But he was on the whole 
the greatest political lawyer since Lyndhurst; 
and he was probably a sounder lawyer than Lynd- 
hurst. He had above all things skill and discretion. 
Sir Stafford Northcote was a man of ability, who 
had an e^fcllent financial training under no less 
a teacheWian Mr. Gladstone himself. But Sir 
Stafford Northcote, although a fluent speaker, 
was not a great debater, and moreover he had 
but little of the genuine Tory in him. He was 
a man of far too modern a spirit and training to 
be a genuine Tory. He was not one whit more 
Conservative than most of the Whigs. Mr. Ga- 
thorne Hardy, afterwards Lord Cranbrook, was a 
man of ingrained Tory instincts rather than con- 
victions. He was a powerful speaker of the rattling, 
declamatory kind ; fluent as the sand in an hour- 
glass is fluent ; stirring as the roll of a drum is 
stirring ; sometimes dry as the sand and empty 
as the drum. A man of far higher ability and 
of really great promise was Lord Robert Cecil, 
afterwards Lord Cranborne, and now Marquis of 
Salisbury. Lord Robert Cecil was at this time 
the ablest scion of noble Toryism in the House 
of Commons. He was younger than Lord Stan- 
lev, and he had not Lord Stanley's solidity, cau- 
tion, or political information. But he had more 
originality ; he had brilliant ideas ; he was ready 
in debate; and he had a positive genius for 
saying bitter things in the bitterest tone. The 
younger son of a great peer, he had at one time 
no apparent chance of succeeding to the title and 
the estates. He had accepted honorable poverty , 
and was glad to help out his means by the use of 
his very clever pen. He wrote in several publi- 



of quarter. For some weeks there was hardly 
anything talked of, we might almost say hardly 
anything thought of, in England, but the story 
of the rebellion that had taken place in the island 
of Jamaica, and the manner in which it had been 
suppressed and punished. The first story came 
from English officers and soldiers who had them- 
selves helped to crush or to punish the supposed 
rebellion. All that the public here could gather 
from the first narratives that found their way into 
print was, that a negro insurrection had broken 
out in Jamaica, and that it had been promptly 
crushed ; but that its suppression seemed to have 
been accompanied by a very carnival of cruelty 
on the part of the soldiers and their volunteer 
auxiliaries. Some of the letters sent home reeked 
with blood. In these letters there was no ques- 
tion of contending with or suppressing an insur- 
rection. The insurrection, such as it was, had 
been suppressed. The writers only gave a de- 
scription of a sort of hunting expedition among 
the negro inhabitants for the purpose of hanging 
and flogging. It also became known that a col- 
ored member of the Jamaica House of Assembly, 
a man named George William Gordon, who was 
suspected of inciting the rebellion, and had sur- 
rendered himself at Kingston, was put on hoard 
an English war vessel there, taken to Morant 
Bay, where martial law had been proclaimed, 
tried by a sort of drumhead court-martial, and 
instantly hanged. 

Such news naturally created a profound sensa- 
tion in England. The Aborigines' Protection 
Society, the Anti-Slavery Society, and other phil- 
anthropic bodies, organized a deputation, im- 
mense in its numbers, and of great influence as 
regarded its composition, to wait on Mr. Card- 
well, Secretary for the Colonies, at the Colonial 
Office, and urge on him the necessity of institu- 
ting a full inquiry and recalling Governor Eyre. 
The deputation was so numerous that it had to 
be received in a great public room, and indeed 
the whole scene was more like that presented by 
some large popular meeting than by a deputation 
to a minister. Mr. Cardwell suspended Mr. Eyre 
temporarily from his functions as Governor, and 
sent out a Commission of Inquiry to investigate 
the whole history of the rebellion and the repres- 
sion, and to report to the Government. The 
Commission held a very long and careful inquiry. 
The history of the events in Jamaica formed a 
sad and shocking narrative. Jamaica had long 
been in a more or less disturbed condition ; at 
least it had long been liable to periodical fits of 
disturbance. What we may call the planter class 
still continued to look on the negroes as an infe- 
rior race hardly entitled to any legal rights. The 
negroes were naturally only too ready to listen 
to any denunciations of the planter class, and to 



cations, it was said, especially in the Quarterly put faith in any agitation which promised to se 



R, vi< "\ the time-honored and somewhat time 
worn organ of Toryism ; and after a while cer- 
tain political articles in the Qiiurterhj came to be 
identified with his name. He was an ultra-Tory ; 
a Tory on principle, who would hear of no com- 
promise. One great object of his political writ- 
ings appeared to be to denounce Mr. Disraeli, his 
titular leader, and to warn the party against him. 
For a long time he was disliked by most persons 
in the House of Commons. His gestures were un- 
gainly ; his voice was singularly unmusical and 
harsh ; and the extraordinary and wanton bit- 
terness of his tongue set the ordinary listeners 
against him. He seemed to take a positive de- 
light in being gratuitously offensive. Lord Rob- 
ert Cecil, therefore, although a genuine Tory, or 
perhaps because he was a genuine Tory, could 
not as yet be looked upon as a man likely to 
render great service to his party. He was just 
as likely to turn against them at some moment 
of political importance. He would not fall in 
with the discipline of the party; he would not 
subject his opinions or his caprices to its sup- 
posed interests. Some men on his own side of 
the House disliked him. Many feared him ; some 
few admired him ; no one regarded him as a 
trustworthy party man. 

Lord Russell's Government had hardly come 
into power before they found that some trouble- 
some business awaited them, and that the trou- 
ble as usual had arisen in a wholly unthought- 



e them some property in the land. The ne- 
groes had undoubtedly some serious grievances. 
They constantly complained that they could not 
get justice administered to them when any dis- 
pute arose between white and black. The Gov- 
ernment had found that there was some ground 
for complaints of this kind at the time when it 
was proposed by the Jamaica Bill to suspend 
the constitution of the island. In 1S65, however, 
the common causes of dissatisfaction were fresh- 
ly and farther complicated by a dispute about 
what were called the "back lands." Lands be- 
longing to some of the great estates in Jamaica 
had been allowed to run out of cultivation. They 
were so neglected by their owners that they were 
turning into mere bush. The quit-rents due on 
them to the Crown had not been paid for seven 
years. The negroes were told that if they paid 
the arrears of quit-rent they might cultivate these 
lands and enjoy them free of rent. It may be 
remarked that the tendency in Jamaica had al- 
most always hitherto been for the Crown officials 
to take the part of the negroes, and for the Ja- 
maica authorities to side with the local magnates. 
Trusting to the assurance given, some of the ne- 
groes paid the arrears of quit-rent, and brought 
the land into cultivation. The agent of one of 
the estates, however, reasserted the right of his 
principal, who had not been a consenting party 
to the arrangement, and he endeavored to evict 
the negro occupiers of the land. The negroes 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



resisted, and legal proceedings were instituted to 
turn them out. The legal proceedings were still 
pending when the events took place which gave 
occasion to so much controversy. 

On October 7, 18G5, some disturbances took 
place on the occasion of a magisterial meeting at 
Morant Bay, a small town on the south-east cor- 
ner of the island. The negroes appeared to be 
in an excited state, and many persons believed 
that an outbreak was at hand. An application 
was made to the Governor for military assistance. 
The Governor of Jamaica was Mr. Edward John 
Eyre, who had been a successful explorer in Cen- 
tral, West, and Southern Australia, had acted as 
resident magistrate and protector of aborigines 
in the region of the Lower Murray, in Australia, 
and had afterwards been Lieutenant-Governor 
of New Zealand, of the Leeward Islands, and of 
other places. All Mr. Eyre's dealings with native 
races up to this time would seem to have earned 
for him the reputation of a just and humaneman. 
The Governor despatched a small military force 
by sea to the scene of the expected disturbances. 
Warrants had been issued, meanwhile, by the 
Cnstos, or chief magistrate of the parish in which 
Morant Bay is situated, for the arrest of some of 
the persons who had taken part in the previous 
disturbances. When the warrants were about 
to be put into execution resistance by force was 
offered. The police were overpowered, and some 
were beaten, ami others compelled to swear that 
they would not interfere with the negroes. On 
the 11th the negroes, armed with sticks and the 
"cutlasses" used in the work of the sugar-cane 
fields, assembled in considerable numbers in the 
square of the Court House, in Morant Bay. The 
magistrates were holding a meeting there. The 
mob made for the Court House ; the local volun- 
teer force came to the help of the magistrates. 
The Riot Act was being read when some stones 
were thrown. The volunteers fired, and some ne- 
groes were seen to fall. Then the rioters at- 
tacked the Court House. The volunteers were 
few in number, and were easily overpowered; 
the Court House was set on fire; eighteen per- 
sons, the Custos among them, were killed, and 
about thirty were wounded ; and a sort of inco- 
herent insurrection suddenly spread itself over 
the neighborhood. The moment, however, that 
the soldiers sent by the Governor, at first only 
one hundred in number, arrived upon the scene 
of disturbance the insurrection collapsed and 
vanished. There never was the slightest attempt 
made by the rioters to keep the field against the 
troops. The soldiers had not in a single instance 
to do any fighting. • The only business left to them 
was to hunt out supposed rebels, and bring them 
before military tribunals. So evanescent was the 
whole movement that it is to this day a matter 
of dispute whether there was any rebellion at all, 
properly so called ; whether there was any organ- 
ized attempt at insurrection ; or whether the dis- 
turbances were not the extemporaneous work of 
a discontented and turbulent mob, whose rush to 
rescue some of their friends expanded suddenly 
into an effort to wreak old grievances on the 
nearest representatives of authority. 

At this time Jamaica was ruled by the Gov- 
ernor and Council, and the House of Assembly. 
Among the members of the Assembly was George 
William Gordon. Gordon was a Baptist by re- 
ligion, and had in him a good deal of the fanatic- 
al earnestness of the field-preacher. He was a 
vehement agitator and a devoted advocate of 
what he considered to be the rights of the ne- 
groes. He appears to have had a certain amount 
of eloquence. He was just the sort of man to 
make himself a nuisance to white colonists and 
officials who wanted to have everything their 
own way. Gordon was in constant disputes with 
the authorities, and with Governor Eyre himself. 
He had been a magistrate, but was dismissed 
from the magistracy in consequence of the al- 
leged violence of his language in making accu- 
sations against another justice. He had taken 
some part in getting up meetings of the colored 
population ; he had made many appeals to the 
Colonial Office in London against this or that act 
on the part of the Governor or the Council, or 
both. He had been appointed church-warden, 
but was declared disqualified for the office in 



consequence of his having become a "native 
Baptist;" and he had brought an action to re- 
cover what he held to be his rights. He had 
come to hold the position of champion of the 
rights and claims of the black man against the 
white. He was a sort of constitutional Opposition 
in himself. The Governor seems to have at once 
adopted the conclusion urged on him by others, 
that Gordon was at the bottom of the insurrec- 
tionary movement. 

On October 13 the Governor proclaimed the 
whole of the county of Surrey, with the excep- 
tion of the city of Kingston, under martial law. 
Jamaica is divided into three counties : Surrey, 
covering the eastern and southern portion, includ- 
ing the region of the Blue Mountains, the towns 
of Port Antonio and Morant Bay, and the con- 
siderable city of Kingston, with its population of 
some thirty thousand. Middlesex comprehends 
the central part of the island, and contains Span- 
ish Town, then the seat of Government. The 
western part of the island is the county of Corn- 
wall. Mr. Gordon lived near Kingston, and had 
a place of business in the city ; and he seems to 
have been there attending to his business, as 
usual, during the days while the disturbances 
were going on. The Governor ordered a war- 
rant to be issued for Gordon's arrest. When 
this fact became known to Gordon he went to 
the house of the General in command of the 
forces at Kingston and gave himself up. The 
Governor had him put at once on board a war 
steamer and conveyed to Morant Bay. Having 
given himself up in a place where martial law 
did not exist, where the ordinary courts were 
open, and where, therefore, he would have been 
ti'ied with all the forms and safeguards of the 
civil law, he was purposely carried away to a 
place which had been put under martial law. 
Here an extraordinary sort of court-martial was 
sitting. It was composed of two young navy 
lieutenants and an ensign in one of her Majes- 
ty's West India regiments. Gordon was hurried 
before this grotesque tribunal, charged with high- 
treason, found guilty, and sentenced to death. 
The sentence was approved by the officer in 
command of the troops sent to Morant Bay. It 
was then submitted to the Governor, and ap- 
proved by him also. It was carried into effect 
without much delay. The day following Gor- 
don's conviction was Sunday, and it was not 
thought seemly to hang a man on the Sabbath. 
He was allowed, therefore, to live over that day. 
On the morning of Monday, October 23, Gordon 
was hanged. He bore his fate with great hero- 
ism, and wrote just before his death a letter to 
his wife, which is full of pathos in its simple and 
dignified manliness. He died protesting his in- 
nocence of any share in disloyal conspiracy or 
insurrectionary purpose. 

The whole of the proceedings connected with 
the trial of Gordon were absolutely illegal from 
first to last. The act which conveyed Mr. Gor- 
don from the protection of civil law to the au- 
thority of a drumhead court-martial was grossly 
illegal. The tribunal was constituted in curious 
defiance of law and precedent. It is contrary to 
all authority to form a court-martial by mixing 
together the officers of the two different services. 
It was an unauthorized tribunal, however, even 
if considered as only a military court-martial, or 
only a naval court-martial. The prisoner thus 
brought by unlawful means before an illegal tri- 
bunal was tried upon testimony taken in ludi- 
crous opposition to all the rules of evidence. 
Such as the evidence was, however, compounded 
of scraps of the paltriest hearsay, and of things 
said when the prisoner was not present, it testi- 
fied rather to the innocence than to the guilt of 
the prisoner. By such a court, on such evidence, 
Gordon was put to death. 

Meanwhile the carnival of repression was go- 
ing on. For weeks the hangings, the floggings, 
the burnings of houses were kept up. The re- 
port of the Royal Commissioners stated that 439 
persons were put to death, and that over six 
hundred, including many women, were flogged, 
some under circumstances of revolting cruelty. 
When the story reached England in clear and 
trustworthy form an association called the Ja- 
maica Committee was formed for the avowed 



purpose of seeing that justice was done. It 
comprised some of the most illustrious English- 
men. Men became members of that committee 
who had never taken part in public agitation of 
any kind before. Another association was 
founded, on the opposite side, for the purpose of 
sustaining Governor Eyre, and it must be owned 
that it too had great mimes. Mr. Mill may be 
said to have led the one side and Mr. Carlyle the 
other. The natural bent of each man's genius 
and temper turned him to the side of the Jamai- 
ca negroes, or of the Jamaica Governor. Mr. 
Tennyson, Mr. Kingsley, Mr. Buskin, followed 
Mr. Carlyle; we know now that Mr. Dickens 
was of the same way of thinking. Mr. Herbert 
Spencer, Professor Huxley, Air. Goldwin Smith, 
were in agreement with Mr. Mill. The case on 
either side may be briefly stated. The more 
reasonable of those who supported Mr. Eyre con- 
tended that at a terrible crisis Mr. Eyre was con- 
fronted with the fearful possibility of a negro in- 
surrection, and that he did the best he could. 
To this the opposite party answered that in fact 
the insurrection, supposing it to have been an in- 
surrection, was all over before the floggings, the 
hangings, and the burnings set in. Not mere- 
ly were the troops masters of the field, but there 
was no armed enemy anywhere to be seen in the 
field or out of it. They contended that men are 
not warranted in inflicting wholesale and hid- 
eous punishments merely in order to strike such 
terror as may prevent the possibility of any fut- 
ure disturbance. 

The Report of the Commissioners was made 
in April, 1866. It declared in substance that 
the disturbances had their immediate origin in 
a planned resistance to authority, arising partly 
out of a desire to obtain the land free of rent, 
and partly out of the want of confidence felt by 
the laboring class in the tribunals by which most 
of the disputes affecting their interests were de- 
cided ; that the disturbance spread rapidly, and 
that Mr. Eyre deserved praise for the skill and 
vigor with which he had stopped it in the begin- 
ning ; but that martial law was kept in force too 
long; that the punishments inflicted were exces- 
sive; that the punishment of death was unnec- 
essarily frequent ; that the floggings were bar- 
barous, and the burnings wanton and cruel ; that 
although it was probable that Gordon, by his 
writings and speeches, had done much to bring 
about excitement and discontent, and thus ren- 
dered insurrection possible, yet there was no suf- 
ficient proof of his complicity in the outbreak, or 
in any organized conspiracy against the Govern- 
ment; and, indeed, that there was no wide- 
spread conspiracy of any kind. Of course this 
finished Mr. Eyre's career as a Colonial Govern- 
or. A new Governor, Sir J. P. Grant, was sent 
out to Jamaica, and a new Constitution was giv- 
en to the island. The Jamaica Committee pros- 
ecuted Mr. Eyre and some of his subordinates, 
but the bills of indictment were always thrown 
out by the grand jury. . After many discussions 
in Parliament, the Government in 1S72 — once 
again a Liberal Government — decided on pay- 
ing Mr.Eyre the expenses to which he had been 
put in defending himself against the various pros- 
ecutions ; and the House of Commons, after a 
long debate, agreed to the vote by a large major- 
ity. On the whole there was not any failure of 
justice. A career full of bright promise was cut 
short for Mr. Eyre, and for some of his subordi- 
nates as well ; and no one accused Mr. Eyre per- 
sonally of anything worse than a fury of mistaken 
zeal. The deeds which were done by his au- 
thority, or to which, when they were done, he 
gave his authority's sanction, were branded with 
such infamy that it is almost impossible such 
things could ever be done again in England's 
name. Even those who excused under the cir- 
cumstances the men by whom the deeds were 
done had seldom a word to say in defence of the 
acts themselves. 

The Queen opened the new Parliament in per- 
son. She then performed the ceremony for the 
first time since the death of the Prince Consort. 
The speech from the throne contained a para- 
graph which announced that her Majesty had di- 
rected that information should be procured in 
reference to the right of voting in the election 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



61 



of members of Parliament, and that when the 
information was complete, '* the attention of 
Parliament will he called to the result thus ob- 
tained, with a view to such improvements in the 
laws which regulate the right of voting in the 
election of members of the House of Commons 
as may tend to strengthen oar free instil titions, 
and conduce to the public welfare." Some an- 
nouncement on the subject of Reform was ex- 
pected by every one. The only surprise felt was 
perhaps at the cautious and limited way in which 
the proposed measure was indicated in the royal 
speech. While Radicals generally insisted that 
the strength of the old Whig party had been suc- 
cessfully exerted to compel a compromise and 
keep Mr. Gladstone down, most of the Tories 
would have it that Mr. Gladstone now had got 
it all his own way, and that the cautious vague- 
ness of the Queen's Speech would only prove to 
be the prelude to very decisive and alarming 
changes in the Constitution. Not since the in- 
troduction by Lord John Russell of the measure 
which became law in 1832 had a Reform Bill 
been expected in England with so much curiosi- 
ty, with so much alarm, and with so much dis- 
position to a foregone conclusion of disappoint- 
ment. On March 12 Mr. Gladstone introduced 
the bill. His speech was eloquent; but the 
House of Commons was not stirred. It was 
evident at once that the proposed measure was 
only a compromise of the most unattractive kind. 
The bill proposed to reduce the county franchise 
from fifty pounds to fourteen pounds, and the 
borough franchise from ten to seven pounds. 
The borough franchise of course was still the 
central question in any reform measure, and this 
was to be reduced by three pounds. 

The man who could bo enthusiastic over such 
a reform must have been a person whose enthu- 
siasm was scarcely worth arousing. The peculi- 
arity of the situation was, that without a genuine 
popular enthusiasm nothing could be done. The 
House of Commons as a whole did not want 
reform. All the Conservatives were, of course, 
openly and consistently opposed to reform; not 
a few of the professing Liberals secretly detested 
it. Only a small number of men in the House 
were genuine in their anxiety for immediate 
change ; and of these the majority were too 
earnest and extreme to care for a reform which 
only meant a reduction of the borough franchise 
from ten pounds to seven pounds. It seemed a ri- 
diculous anti-climax, after all the indignant elo- 
qcnce about " unenfranchised millions,'" to come 
down to a scheme for enfranchising a few hund- 
reds here and there. Those who believed in the 
sincerity and high purpose of Lord Russell and 
Mr. Gladstone, and who therefore assumed that 
if they said this was all they could do there 
was nothing else to be done — these supported 
the bill. Mr. Bright supported it ; somewhat 
coldly at first, but afterwards, when warmed by 
the glow of debate and of opposition, with all 
his wonted power. It was evident, however, 
that he was supporting Lord Russell and Mr. 
Gladstone rather than their Reform Bill. Mr. 
Mill supported the bill, partly, no doubt, for the 
same reason, and partly because it had the sup- 
port of Mr. Blight. But it would have been hard 
to find any one who said that he really cared 
much about the measure itself, or that it was the 
sort of tiling he would have proposed if he had 
his way. The Conservatives as a man opposed 
the measure ; and they had allies. Day after 
day saw new secessions of emboldened Whigs 
and half-hearted Liberals. The Ministerial side 
of the House was fast becoming demoralized. 
The Liberal party was breaking up into muti- 
nous camps and unmanageable coteries. 

Mr. Robert Lowe was the hero of the Opposi- 
tion thai fought against the bill. His attacks 
on the Government had, of course, all the more 
piquancy that they came from a Liberal, and 
one who had held office in two Liberal adminis- 
trations. The Tory benches shouted and scream- 
ed with delight, as in speech after speech of 
admirable freshness ami vigor Mr. Lowe poured 
his scathing sarcasms in upon the bill and its 
authors. Even their own leader and champion, 
Mr. Disraeli, became of comparatively small ac- 
count with the Tories when they heard Mr. 



Lowe's invectives against their enemies. Much 
of Mr. Lowe's success was undoubtedly due to 
the manner in which he hit the tone and temper 
of the Conservatives and of the disaffected Whigs. 
Applause and admiration are contagious in the 
House of Commons. When a great number of 
voices join in cheers and in praise, other voices 
are caught by the attraction, and cheer and praise 
out of the sheer infection of sympathy. It is 
needless to say that the applause reacts upon the 
orator. The more he feels that the House ad- 
mires him, the more likely he is to make himself 
worthy of the admiration. The occasion told 
on Mr. Lowe. His form seemed, metaphorically 
at least, to grow greater and grander on that 
scene, as the enthusiasm of his admirers waxed 
and heated. Certainly he never after that time 
made any great mark by his speeches, or won 
back any of the fame as an orator which was his 
during that short and to him splendid period. 
But the speeches themselves were masterly as 
mere literary productions. Not many men could 
have fewer physical qualifications for success in 
oratory than Mr. Lowe. He had an awkward 
and ungainly presence; his gestures were angu- 
lar and ungraceful ; his voice was harsh and 
rasping ; his articulation was so imperfect that 
he became now and then almost unintelligible; 
his sight was so short that when he had to read 
a passage or extract of any kind, he could only 
puzzle over its contents in a painful and blunder- 
ing way, even with the paper held up close to 
his eyes; and his memory was not good enough 
to allow him to quote anything without the help 
of documents. How, it may be asked in wonder, 
was such a speaker as this to contend in eloquence 
with the torrent-like fluency, the splendid diction, 
the silver-trumpet voice of Gladstone; or with 
the thrilling vibrations of Blight's noble elo- 
quence, now penetrating in its pathos, and now 
irresistible in its humor ? Even those who well 
remember these great debates may ask them- 
selves in unsatisfied wonder the same question 
now. It is certain that Mr. Lowe has not the 
most distant claim to be ranked as an orator 
with Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright. Yet it is 
equally certain that he did for that season stand 
up against each of them, against them both ; 
against, them both at their very best; and that 
he held his own. 

Mr. Disraeli was thrown completely into the 
shade. Mr. Disraeli was not, it is said, much 
put out by this. He listened quietly, perhaps 
even contemptuously, looking upon the whole 
episode as one destined to pass quickly away. 
He did not believe that Mr. Lowe was likely to 
be a peer of Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Bright — or of 
himself — in debate. But for the time Mr. Lowe 
was the master-spirit of the Opposition to the 
Reform Bill. In sparkling sentences, full of 
classical allusion and of illustrations drawn from 
all manner of literatures, he denounced and sat- 
irized demagogues, democratic governments, and 
every influence that tended to bring about any 
political condition which allowed of an ominous 
comparison with something in Athenian history. 
The Conservatives made a hero, and even an 
idol, of him. Shrewd old members of the party, 
who ought to have known better, were heard to 
declare that he was not only the greatest orator 
but even the greatest statesman of the day. In 
truth, Mr. Lowe was neither orator nor states- 
man. He had some of the gifts which are 
needed to make a man an orator, but hardly any 
of those which constitute a statesman. He was 
a literary man and a scholar, who had a happy 
knack of saying bitter things in an epigrammatic 
way ; he really hated the Reform Bill, towards 
which Mr. Disraeli probably felt no emotion what- 
ever, and he started into prominence as an anti- 
reformer just at the right moment to suit the 
Conservatives and embarrass and dismay the 
Liberal party. He was greatly detested lor a 
time among the working-classes, for whose bene- 
fit the measure was chiefly introduced. He not 
only spoke out with cynical frankness his own 
opinion of the merits and morals of the people 
" who live in these small houses," but he implied 
that all the other members of the House held the 
same opinion, if they would only venture to give 
it a tongue. He was once or twice mobbed in 



! the streets ; he was strongly disliked and dreaded 
for the hour by the Liberals; he was the most 
prominent figure on the stage during these weeks 
of excitement; and no doubt he was perfectly 
happy. 

The debates on the bill brought out some 
speeches which have not been surpassed in the 
Parliamentary history of our time. Mr. Bright 
and Mr. Gladstone were at their very best. Mr. 
Bright likened the formation of the little hand 
of malcontents to the doings of David in the cave 
of Adullam when he called about him "every 
one that was in distress and every one that was 
discontented," and became a captain over them. 
The allusion told upon the House with instant 
effect, for many had suspected and some had said 
that if Mr. Lowe had been more carefully con- 
ciliated by the Prime-minister at the time of his 
Government's formation, there might have been 
no such acrimonious opposition to the bill. The 
little third party were at once christened the 
Adullamites, and the name still survives, and is 
likely long to survive, its old political history. 
Mr. Gladstone's speech, with which the great 
debate on the second reading concluded, was 
aflame with impassioned eloquence. This speech 
was concluded on the morning of April 28. 
The debate which it brought to a close had been 
carried on for eight nights. The House of Com- 
mons was wrought up to a pitch of the most in- 
tense excitement when the division came to be 
taken. The closing passages of Mr. Gladstone's 
speech had shown clearly enough that he did not 
expect much of a triumph for the Government. 
The House was crowded to excess. The num- 
bers voting were large beyond almost any other 
previous instance. There were for the second 
reading of the bill 318 ; there were against it 
313. The second reading was carried by a ma- 
jority of only five. The wild cheers of the Con- 
servatives and the Adullamites showed that the 
bill was doomed. The question now was not 
whether the measure would be a failure, but only 
when the failure would have to be confessed. 
The time for the confession soon came. The 
opponents of the reform scheme kept pouring in 
amendments. These came chiefly from the 
Ministerial side of the House. Lord Duukellin, 
usually a supporter of the Government, mo«ed 
an amendment the effect of which would be to 
make the franchise a little higher than the Gov- 
ernment proposed to fix it. Lord Duukellin car- 
ried his amendment. Lord Russell and Mr. 
Gladstone accepted the situation, and resigned 
office. 

The defeat of the bill and the resignation of 
the Ministry brought the political career of Lord 
Russell to a close. He took advantage of the 
occasion soon after to make a formal announce- 
ment that he handed over the task of leading the 
Liberal party to Mr. Gladstone. He appeared, 
indeed, in public life on several occasions after 
his resignation of office. He took part, some- 
times, in the debates of the House of Lords ; he 
even once or twice introduced measures there, 
and endeavored to get them passed. Lord Rus- 
sell's career, however, was practically at an end. 
It had been a long and an interesting career. It 
was begun amid splendid chances. Lord John 
Russell was born in the very purple of politics; 
he was cradled and nursed among statesmen and 
orators ; the fervid breath of voting liberty fanned 
his boyhood ; his tutors, friends, companions, 
were the master-spirits who rule the fortunes 
of nations; he had the ministerial benches for a 
training-ground, and had a seat in the Adminis- 
tration at his disposal when another young man 
might have been glad of a seat in an opera-box. 
He must have been brought into more or less 
intimate association with all the men and women 
worth knowing in Europe since the early part 
of the century. Lord John Russell had tastes 
for literature, for art, for philosophy, for history. 
for politics, and his asiheticism had the advan- 
tage that it made him seek the society and 
appreciate the worth of men of genius and let- 
ters. Thus he never remained a mere politician, 
like Palmerston. His public career su 
strange series of contradictions or paiadoxes. 
In Ireland he was long known rather as the 
author of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill than as 



62 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



the early friend of Catholic Emancipation ; in 
England as the parent of petty and abortive 
Reform Bills, rather than as the promoter of 
one great Reform Bill. Abroad and at home 
he came to be thought of as the Minister who 
disappointed Denmark and abandoned Poland, 
rather than as the earnest friend and faithful 
champion of oppressed nationalities. No states- 
man could be a more sincere and thorough op- 
ponent of slavery in all its forms and works ; 
and yet in the mind of the American people 
Lord Russell's name was for a long time asso- 
ciated with the idea of a scarcely concealed sup- 
port of the slaveholders' rebellion. Much of this 
curious contrast, this seeming inconsistency, is due 
to the fact that for the greater part of his pub- 
lic life Lord Russell's career was a mere course 
of see-saw between office and opposition. The 
sort of superstition that long prevailed in our 
political affairs limited the higher offices of 
statesmanship to two or three conventionally ac- 
ceptable men on either side. If not Sir Robert 
Peel then it must be Lord John Russell: if it 
was not Lord Derby it must be Lord Palmer- 
ston. Therefore if the business of government 
was to go on at all, a statesman must take office 
now and then with men whom he could not 
mould wholly to his purpose, and must act in 
seeming sympathy with principles and measures 
which he would himself have little cared to orig- 
inate. The personal life of Lord Russell was 
consistent all through. He began as a Reform- 
er ; he ended as a Reformer. 

CHAPTER XXI. 



The Queen, of course, sent for Lord Derby. 
He had no personal desire to enter office once 
again ; he had no inclination for official respon- 
sibilities. He was not very fond of work, even 
when younger and stronger, and the habitual 
indolence of his character had naturally grown 
with years, and just now with infirmities. It 
was generally understood that he would only 
consent to be the Prime-minister of an interval, 
and that whenever, with convenience to the in- 
terests of the State, some other hand could be 
intrusted with power, he would expect to be 
released from the trouble of official life. The 
prospect for a Conservative Ministry was not 
inviting. Lord Derby had hoped to be able to 
weld together a sort of coalition Ministry, which 
should to a certain extent represent both sides 
of the House. Accordingly he at once invited 
the leading members of the Adullamite party to 
accept places in his Administration. He was 
met by disappointment. The Adullamite chiefs 
agreed to decline all such co-operation. When 
it was known that Mr. Lowe would not take 
office under Lord Derby, nobody cared what 
became of the other denizens of the Cave. 
Some of them were men of great territorial in- 
fluence; some were men of long standing in 
Parliament. But they were absolutely unno- 
ticed, now that the crisis was over. They might 
take office or let it alone; the public at large 
were absolutely indifferent on the subject. 

The session had advanced far towards its usu- 
al time of closing, when Lord Derby completed 
the arrangements for his Administration. Mr. 
Disraeli, of course, became Chancellor of the 
Exchequer and leader of the House of Com- 
mons, Lord Stanley was Foreign Secretary, 
Lord Cranbourne, formerly Lord Robert Ceeil, 
was intrusted witli the care of India; Lord 
Carnarvon undertook the Colonies ; General 
Peel, became War Minister; Sir Stafford North- 
cote was President of the Board of Trade ; and 
Mr. Walpole took on himself the management 
of the Home Office, little knowing what a trou- 
blous business he had brought upon his shoul- 
ders. Sir John Pakington boldly assumed the 
control of the Admiralty. On July 9 Lord Der- 
by was able to announce to the Peers that he 
had put together his house of cards. 

The new Ministry had hardly taken their 
places when a perfect storm of agitation broke 
out all over the country. The Conservatives and 
the Adullamites had both asserted that the work- 
ing-people in geaeralwere indifferent about the 



franchise ; and a number of organizations now 
sprang into existence, having for their object to 
prove to the world that no such apathy prevailed. 
Reform Leagues and Reform Unions started up 
as if out of the ground. Public meetings of vast 
dimensions began to be held da} f after day for the 
purpose of testifying to the strength of the desire 
for Reform. The most noteworthy of these was 
the famous Hyde Park meeting. The Reform- 
ers of the metropolis determined to hold a mon- 
ster meeting in the Park. The authorities took 
the very unwise course of determining to prohibit 
it, and a proclamation or official notice was is- 
sued to that effect. The Reformers were acting 
under the advice of Mr. Edmond Beales, presi- 
dent of the Reform League, a barrister of some 
standing, and a man of character and considera- 
ble ability. Mr. Beales was of opinion that the au- 
thorities had no legal power to prevent the meet- 
ing ; and of course it need hardly be said that a 
Commissioner of Police, or even a Home Secre- 
tary, is not qualified to make anything legal or 
illegal by simply proclaiming it so. The Lon- 
don Reformers, therefore, determined to try their 
right with the authorities. On July 23 a num- 
ber of processions, marching with bands and 
banners, set out from different parts of London 
and made for Hyde Park. The authorities had 
posted notices announcing that the gates of the 
Park would be closed at five o'clock that even- 
ing. When the first of the processions arrived 
at the Park the gates were closed, and a line of 
policemen was drawn outside. The president of 
the Reform League, Mr. Beales, and some oth- 
er prominent Reformers, came up in a carriage, 
alighted, and endeavored to enter the Park. 
They were refused admittance. They asked for 
the authority by which they were refused ; and 
they were told it was the authority of the Com- 
missioner of Police. They then quietly re-enter- 
ed the carriage. It was their intention first to 
assert their right, and then, being refused, to try 
it in the regular and legal way. They went to 
Trafalgar Square, followed by a large crowd, and 
there a meeting was extemporized, at which res- 
olutions were passed demanding the extension 
of the suffrage, and thanking Mr. Gladstone, Mr. 
Bright, and other men who had striven to obtain 
it. The speaking was short ; it was not physi- 
cally possible to speak with any effect to so large 
an assemblage. Then that part of the demon- 
stration came quietly to an end. 

Meanwhile, however, a different scene had 
been going on at Hyde Park. A large and motley 
crowd had hung about the gates and railings. 
The crowd was composed partly of genuine Re- 
formers, partly of mere sight-seers and curiosity- 
mongers, partly of mischievous boys, and to no 
inconsiderable extent of ordinary London roughs. 
Not a few of all sections, perhaps, were a little 
disappointed that things had gone so quietly off. 
The mere mass of people pressed and pressing 
round the railings would almost in any case have 
somewhat seriously threatened their security and 
tried their strength. The rails began to give 
way. There was a simultaneous, impulsive rush, 
and some yards of railing were down, and men 
in scores were tumbling, and floundering, and 
rushing over them. The example was followed 
along Park Lane, and in a moment half a mile 
of iron railing was lying on the grass, and a tu- 
multuous and delighted mob were swarming over 
the Park. The news ran wildly through the 
town. Some thought it a revolt ; others were of 
opinion that it was a revolution. The first day 
of liberty was proclaimed here — the breaking 
loose of anarchy was shrieked at there. The 
mob capered and jumped over the sward for half 
the night through. Flower-beds and shrubs suf- 
fered a good deal, not so much from wanton de- 
struction as fi'om the pure boisterousness which 
came of an unexpected opportunity for horse- 
play. There were a good many little encounters 
with the police ; stones were thrown on the one 
side and truncheons used on the other pretty 
freely; a detachment of foot guards was kept 
near the spot in readiness, but their services were 
not required. Indeed, the mob good-humored- 
ly cheered the soldiers whenever they caught 
sight of them. A few heads were broken on 
both sides, and a few prisoners were made by the 



police ; but there was no revolution, no revolt, no 
serious riot, even, and no intention in the mind 
of any responsible person that there should be a 
riot. Mr. Disraeli that night declared in the 
House of Commons — half probably in jest, half 
certainly in earnest, that he was not quite sure 
whether he had still a house to go to. He found 
his house yet standing, and firmly roofed, when 
he returned home that night. London slept fe- 
verishly, and awoke next day to find things going 
on very much as before. Crowds hastened, half 
in amusement, half in fear, to look upon the 
scene of the previous evening's turmoil. There 
were the railings down, sure enough ; and in the 
Park was still a large, idle crowd, partly of harm- 
less sightseers, partly of roughs, with a consid- 
erable body of police keeping order. But there 
was no popular rising, and London began once 
more to eat its meals in peace. 

Nothing can well be more certain than the 
fact that the Hyde Park riot, as it was called, 
convinced her Majesty's Ministers of the necessity 
of an immediate adoption of the reform principle. 
The Government took the Hyde Park riot with 
portentous gravity. Mr. Beales' and some of his 
colleagues waited upon the Home Secretary next 
day, for the purpose of advising him to withdraw 
the military and police from the Park, and leave 
it in the custody of the Reformers. Mr. Beales 
gravely lectured the Government for what they 
had done, and declared, as was undoubtedly the 
fact, that the foolish conduct of the Administra- 
tion had been the original cause of all the dis- 
turbance. The Home Secretary, Mr. Walpole, 
a gentle and kindly man, had lost his head in 
the excitement of the hour. He mentally saw 
himself charged with the responsibility of civil 
strife and bloodshed. He was melted out of all 
self- command by the kindly bearing of Mr. 
Beales and the Reformers, and when they assured 
him that they were only anxious to help him to 
keep order, he fairly broke down and wept. He 
expressed himself with meek gratitude for their 
promised co-operation, and agreed to almost any- 
thing they could suggest. It was understood 
that the right of meeting in Hyde Park was left 
to be tested in some more satisfactory way at a 
future day, and the leaders of the Reform League 
took their departure undoubted masters of the 
situation. 

All through the autumn and winter great 
meetings were held in the great towns and cities 
to promote the cause of reform. A most signifi- 
cant feature of these demonstrations was the 
part taken by the organized trades associations 
of working-men. They were great in numbers, 
and most imposing in their silent united strength. 
They had grown into all that discipline and that 
power unpatronized by any manner of authority ; 
unrecognized by the law, unless indeed where the 
law occasionally went out of its way to try to 
prevent or thwart the aims of their organization. 
They had now grown to such strength that law 
and authority must see to make terms with them. 
The capitalist and all who share his immediate 
interests ; the employers, the rich of every kind, 
the aristocratic, the self-appointed public in. 
structors, had all been against them ; and they 
had nevertheless gone deliberately and stubbornly 
their own way. Sometimes they, or the cause 
they represented, had prevailed ; often they and 
it had been defeated ; but they had never acknowl- 
edged a defeat in principle, and they had kept 
on their own course undismayed, and, as many 
would have put it, unconvinced and unreconciled. 

While England was thus occupied, stirring 
events were taking place elsewhere. In the in- 
terval between the resignation of Lord Russell 
and the completion of Lord Derby's ministry 
Austria and Prussia had gone to war, and the 
leadership of Germany had been decisively won 
by Prussia. Venetia had been added to Italy, 
Prussia's ally in the war, and Austria had been 
excluded from any share in German affairs. 
English public instructors were for the most 
part completely agreed about the utter incapacity 
of the Prussians for the business of war, and 
the complete overthrow of Austria came with 
the shock of a bewildering surprise upon the 
great mass of our people. 

Just before the adjournment of Parliament for 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



63 



the recess a great work of peace was accom- 
plished. This was the completion of the Atlan- 
tic cable. On the evening of July 27, 1866, the 
cable was laid between Europe and America. 
Next day Lord Stanley, as Foreign Minister, 
was informed that perfect communication exist- 
ed between England and the United States by- 
means of a thread of wire that lay beneath the 
Atlantic. Words of friendly congratulation and 
greeting were interchanged between the Queen 
and the President of the United States. Ten 
years all but a month or two had gone by since 
Mr. Cyrus W. Field, the American promoter of 
the Atlantic telegraph project, had first tried to 
inspire cool and calculating men in London, 
Liverpool, and Manchester with some faith in 
his project. It was not he who first thought of 
doing the thing, but it was he who first made up 
his mind that it could be done, and showed the 
world how to do it, and did it in the end. The 
history of human invention has not a more in- 
spiriting example of patience living down dis- 
couragement, and perseverance triumphing over 
defeat. The first attempt to lay the cable was 
made in 1857; but the vessels engaged in the 
expedition had only got about three hundred 
miles from the west coast of Ireland when the 
cable broke, and the effort had to be given up 
for that year. Next year the enterprise was 
renewed, and failed again. Another effort, how- 
ever, was made that summer. The cable was 
actually laid. It did for a few days unite Europe 
and America. Messages of congratulation passed 
along between the Queen and the President of 
the United States. Suddenly, however, the sig- 
nals became faint; the, messages grew inarticu- 
late, and before long the power of communication 
ceased altogether. The cable became a mere 
cable again ; the wire that spoke with such a 
miraculous eloquence had become silent. The 
construction of the cable had proved to be de- 
fective, and a new principle had to be devised 
by science. Yet something definite had been ac- 
complished. It had been shown that a cable 
could be stretched and maintained under the 
ocean more than two miles deep and two thou- 
sand miles across. Another attempt was made 
in 1865, but it proved again a failure, and the 
shivered cable had to be left for the time in the 
bed of the Atlantic. At last, in 1866, the feat 
was accomplished, and the Atlantic telegraph 
was added to the realities of life. 

The autumn and winter of agitation passed 
away, and the time was at hand when the new 
Ministry must meet a new session of Parliament. 
The country looked with keen interest, and also 
with a certain amused curiosity, to see what the 
Government would do with Reform in the ses- 
sion of 1867. Parliament opened on February 
5. The Speech from the Throne alluded, as ev- 
ery one had expected that it would, to the sub- 
ject of Reform. " Your attention," so ran the 
words of the speech, "will again be called to the 
state of the representation of the people in Par- 
liament;" and then the hope was expressed that 
"your deliberations, conducted in a spirit of 
moderation and mutual forbearance, may lead to 
the adoption of measures which, without unduly 
disturbing the balance of political power, shall 
freely extend the elective franchise." The hand 
of Mr. Disraeli, people said, was to be seen 
clearly enough in these vague and ambiguous 
phrases. How, it was asked, can the franchise 
be freely extended, in the Reformer's sense, 
without disturbing the balance of political pow- 
er unduly, in Mr. Disraeli's sense ? More and 
more the conviction spread that Mr. Disraeli 
would only try to palm off some worthless 
measure on the House of Commons, and, by the 
help of the insincere Reformers and Adullamites, 
endeavor to induce the majority to accept it. 
People had little idea, however, of the flexibil- 
ity the Government were soon to display. The 
history of Parliament in out- modern days, or, 
indeed, in any days that we know much of, has 
nothing like the proceedings of that extraordinary 
session. 

( )n February 1 1 Mr. Disraeli announced that 
the Government had made up their minds to 
proceed "by way of resolution." The great 
difficulty, he explained, in the way of passing 



a Reform Bill was that the two great political 
parties could not be got to agree beforehand on 
any principles by which to construct a measure. 
" Let us, then, before we go to work at the con- 
struction of a Reform Bill this time, agree among 
ourselves as to what sort of a measure we want. 
The rest will be easy." He therefore announced 
his intention to put into the Parliamentary cal- 
dron a handful of resolutions, out of which, when 
they had been allowed to simmer, would miracu- 
lously arise the majestic shape of a good Reform 
Bill made perfect. The resolutions which Mr. 
Disraeli proposed to submit to the House were, 
for the most part, sufficiently absurd. Some of 
them were platitudes which it could not be worth 
any one's while to take the trouble of affirming 
by formal resolution. But most of the reso- 
lutions embodied propositions such as no Prime- 
minister could possibly have expected the House 
to agree on without violent struggles, determined 
resistance, and eager divisions. The Liberal 
party, especially that section of it which ac- 
knowledged the authority of Mr. Bright, would 
have had to be beaten to its knees before it would 
consent to accept some of these devices. Mr. 
Disraeli seems to have learned almost at once, 
from the demeanor of the House, that it would 
be hopeless to press his resolutions. On Febru- 
ary 25 he quietly substituted for them a sort of 
Reform Bill which he announced that the Gov- 
ernment intended to introduce. The occupation 
franchise in boroughs was to be reduced to six 
pounds, and in counties to twenty pounds, in each 
case the qualification to be based on rating ; 
that is, the right of a man to vote was to be 
made dependent on the arrangements by his local 
vestry or other rate-imposing body. There were 
to be all manner of " fancy franchises." There 
seemed something unintelligible, or at least mys- 
terious, about the manner in which this bill was 
introduced. It was to all appearance not based 
upon the resolutions; certainly it made no refer- 
ence to some of the more important of their pro- 
visions. It never had any substantial existence. 
The House of Commons received with contempt- 
uous indifference Mr. Disraeli's explanation of 
its contents, and the very next day Mr. Disraeli 
announced that the Government had determined 
to withdraw it, to give up at the same time the 
whole plan of proceeding by resolution, and to 
introduce a real and substantial Reform Bill in 
a few days. 

Parliament and the public were amazed at 
these sudden changes. The whole thing seemed 
turning into burlesque. The session had seen 
only a few days, and here already was a third 
variation in the shape of the Government's 
reform project. To increase the confusion and 
scandal, it was announced three or four days af- 
ter that three leading members of the Cabinet — 
General Peel, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord Gran- 
borne — had resigned. The whole story at last 
came out. The revelation was due to the " mag- 
nificent indiscretion " of Sir John Pakington, 
whose lucky incapacity to keep a secret has cu- 
riously enriched one chapter of the political his- 
tory of his time. In consequence of the necessa- 
ry reconstruction of the Cabinet, Sir John Pak- 
ington was transferred from the Admiralty to the 
War Office, and had to go down to his constitu- 
ents of Droitwich for re-election. In the fulness 
of his heart he told a story which set all England 
laughing. The Government, it would appear, 
started with two distinct Reform Bills, one more 
comprehensive and liberal, as they considered, 
than the other. The latter was kept ready only 
as a last resource, in case the first should meet 
with a chilling reception from the Conservatism 
of the House of Commons. In that emergency 
they proposed to be ready to produce their less 
comprehensive scheme. The more liberal meas- 
ure was to have been strictly based on the reso- 
lutions. The Cabinet met on Saturday, February 
23, and then, as Sir John Pakington said, he and 
others were under the impression that they had 
come to a perfect understanding ; that they were 
unanimous ; and that the comprehensive measure 
was to be introduced on Monday, the 25th. On 
that Monday, however, the Cabinet were hastily 
summoned together. Sir John rushed to the 
spot, and a piece of alarming news awaited him. 



Some leading members of the Cabinet had re- 
fused point-blank to have anything to do with 
the comprehensive bill. Here was a coil! It 
was two o'clock. Lord Derby had to address a 
meeting of the Conservative party at half- past 
two. Mr. Disraeli had to introduce the bill, 
some bill, in the House of Commons at half- 
past four. Something must be done. Some bill 
must be introduced. All eyes, we may suppose, 
glanced at the clock. Sir John Pakington aver- 
red that there were only ten minutes left for de- 
cision. It is plain that no man, whatever his 
gift of statesmanship or skill of penmanship, can 
draw up a complete Reform Bill in ten minutes. 
Now came into full light the wisdom and provi- 
dence of those who had hit upon the plan of 
keeping a second-class bill, if we may use such 
an expression, ready for emergencies. Out came 
the second-class bill, and it was promptly re- 
solved that Mr. Disraeli should go down to the 
House of Commons and gravely introduce that, 
as if it were the measure which the Government 
had all along had it in their minds to bring for- 
ward. Sir John defended that resolution with 
simple and practical earnestness. It was not a 
wise resolve, he admitted ; but who can be cer- 
tain of acting wisely with only ten minutes for 
deliberation ? If they had had even an hour to 
think the matter over, he had no doubt, he said, 
that they would not have made any mistake. 
But they had not an hour, and there was an end 
of the matter. They had to do something ; and 
so Mr. Disraeli brought in his second-class meas- 
ure; the measure which Sir John Pakington's 
piquant explanation sent down into political his- 
tory with the name of the "Ten Minutes' Bill." 

The trouble arose, it seems, in this way : Af- 
ter the Cabinet broke up on the evening of Sat- 
urday, February 23, in seeming harmony, Lord 
Cranborne worked out the figures of the bill, and 
found that they would almost amount to house- 
hold suffrage in some of the boroughs. That 
would never do, he thought ; and so he tendered 
his resignation. This would almost, as a matter 
of course, involve other resignations too. There- 
fore came the hasty meeting of the Cabinet on 
Monday, the 25th, which Sir John Pakington de- 
scribed with such unconscious humor. Lord 
Cranborne, and those who thought with him, 
were induced to remain, on condition that the 
comprehensive bill should be quietly put aside, 
and the ten minutes' bill as quietly substituted. 
Unfortunately, the reception given to the ten 
minutes' bill was utterly discouraging. It was 
clear to Mr. Disraeli's experienced eye that it 
had not a chance from either side of the House. 
Mr. Disraeli made up his mind, and Lord Derby 
assented. There was nothing to be done but to 
fall back on the comprehensive measure. Un- 
willing colleagues must act upon their convic- 
tions and go. It would be idle to secure their 
co-operation by persevering farther with a bill 
that no one would have. Therefore it was that 
on February 26 Mr. Disraeli withdrew his bill 
of the day before, the ten minutes' bill, and an- 
nounced that the Government would go to work 
in good earnest, and bring in a real bill on March 
18. This proved to be the bill based on the res- 
olutions ; the comprehensive bill which had been 
suddenly put out of sight at the hasty meeting 
of the Cabinet on Monday, February 25, as de- 
scribed in the artless and unforgotten eloquence 
of Sir John Pakington's Droitwich speech. 
Then General Peel, Lord Carnarvon, and Lord 
Cranborne resigned their offices. For the second 
time within ten years a Conservative Cabinet 
had been split up on a question of Reform and 
the Borough Franchise. 

It must be owned that it required some cour- 
age and nerve on Mr. Disraeli's part to face the 
House of Commons with another scheme and a 
newly -constructed Cabinet, after all these sur- 
prises. The first thing to do was to reorganize 
tin- Cabinet by getting a new War Secretary, 
Colonial Secretary, and Secretary for India. 
Before March ,s this was accomplished. The 
men who had resigned carried with them into 
their retirement the respect of all their political 
opponents. During his short administration of 
India, Lord Cranbourne had shown not merely 
capacity, for that every one knew he possessed, 



64 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



but a gravity, self-restraint, and sense of re- 
sponsibility for which even Ms friends had not 
previously" given him credit. Sir John Paking- 
ton became War Minister, Mr. Corry succeed- 
ing him as first Lord of the Admiralty. The 
Duke of Buckingham became Colonial Secre- 
tary. The administration of the India De- 
partment was transferred to Sir Stafford North- 
cote, whose place at the head of the Board of 
Trade thus vacated was taken by the Duke of 
Richmond. Then, having thrown their muti- 
neers overboard, the Government went to work 
again at their Reform scheme. On March 18 
Mr. Disraeli introduced the Bill. As regarded 
the franchise, this measure proposed that in bor- 
oughs all who paid rates, or twenty shillings a 
year in direct taxation, should have the vote ; 
and also that property in the funds and savings- 
banks, and so forth, should be honored with the 
franchise; and that there should be a certain 
educational franchise as well. The clauses for 
the extension of the franchise were counterbal- 
anced and fenced around with all manner of 
ingeniously devised qualifications to prevent the 
force of numbers among the poorer classes from 
having too much of its own way. There was a 
disheartening elaborateness of ingenuity in all 
these devices. The machine was far too dain- 
tily adjusted ; the checks and balances were too 
cleverly arranged by half; it was apparent to 
almost every eye that some parts of the mechan- 
ism would infallibly get out of working order, and 
that some others would never get into it. Mr. 
Bright compared the whole scheme to a plan for 
offering something with one hand and quietly 
withdrawing it with the other. There was, how- 
ever, one aspect of the situation which to many 
Reformers seemed decidedly hopeful. It was 
plain to them now that the Government were 
determined to do anything whatever in order to 
get a Reform Bill of some kind passed that year. 
They would have anything which could com- 
mand a majority rather than nothing. Lord 
Derby afterwards frankly admitted that he did 
not see why a monopoly of Reform should be 
left to the Liberals ; and Mr. Disraeli had clear- 
ly made up his mind that he would not go out 
of office this time on a Reform Bill. 

The leading spirits of the Government were 
now determined to carry a Reform Bill that 
session, come what would. One by one, all Mr. 
Disraeli's checks, balances, and securities were 
abandoned. The fancy franchises were swept 
clear away. At various stages of the bill Mr. 
Disraeli kept announcing that if this or that 
amendment were carried against the Govern- 
ment, the Government would not go any far- 
ther with the bill ; but when the particular 
amendment was carried Mr. Disraeli always 
announced that Ministers had changed their 
minds after all, and were willing to accept the 
new alteration. At last this little piece of for- 
mality began to be regarded by the House as 
mere ceremonial. The Bill became in the end 
a measure to establish household suffrage pure 
and simple in the towns. The Reform Bill 
passed through its final stage on August 15, 
1867. We may summarize its results thus con- 
cisely : it enfranchised in boroughs all mule house- 
holders rated for the relief of the poor, and all 
lodgers resident for one year, and paying not less 
than £10 a year rent; and in counties persons 
of property of the clear annual value of £5, and 
occupiers of lands or tenements paying £12, a 
year. It disfranchised certain small boroughs, 
and reduced the representation of other constit- 
uencies; it created several new constituencies, 
atnong others the borough of Chelsea and the 
borough of Hackney. It gave a third member 
to Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and 
Leeds; it gave a representative to the Uni- 
versity of London, It secured a sort of rep- 
resentation of minorities in certain constituen- 
cies by enacting that where there were to be 
three representatives each elector should vote 
for only two candidates ; and that in the City 
of London, which has four members, each elec- 
tor should only vote for three. The Irish and 
Scotch Reform Bills were put off for another 
year. We may, however, anticipate a little, and 
dispose of the Scotch and Irish Bills at once, 



the more especially as both proved to be very 
trivial and unsatisfactory. The Scotch Bill gave 
Scotland a borough franchise the same as that of 
England; and a county franchise based either 
on £5 clear annual value of property, or an 
occupation of £14 a year. The Government 
proposed at first to make the county occupation 
franchise the same as that in England. All 
qualification as to rating for the poor was, how- 
ever, struck out of the Bill by amendments, the 
rating systems of Scotland being unlike those 
of England. The Government then put in £1+ 
as the equivalent of the English occupier's £12 
rating franchise. Some *iew seats were given 
to Scotland, which the Government at first pro- 
posed to get by increasing the number of mem- 
bers of the House of Commons, but which they 
were forced by amendments to obtain by the 
disfranchisement of some small English bor- 
oughs. The Irish Bill is hardly worth men- 
tioning. It left the county franchise as it was, 
£12, reduced the borough franchise from £8 to 
£4, and did nothing in the way of redistribution. 

While the English Reform Bill was passing 
through its several stages the Government went 
deliberately out of their way to make themselves 
again ridiculous with regard to the public meetings 
in Hyde Park. The Reform League convened 
a public meeting to be held in that park on May 
6. Mr. Walpole, on May 1, issued a proclamation 
intended to prevent the meeting, and warning 
all persons not to attend it. The League took 
legal advice, found that their meeting would not 
be contrary to law, and accordingly issued a coun- 
ter proclamation asserting their right, and declar- 
ing that the meeting would be held in order to 
maintain it. The Government found out a little 
too late that the League had strict law on their 
side. The law gave to the Crown control over 
the parks, and the right of prosecuting trespass- 
ers of any kind ; but it gave the Administration 
no power to anticipate trespass from the holding 
of a public meeting and to prohibit it in advance. 
The meeting was held ; it was watched by a 
large body of police and soldiers ; but it passed 
over very quietly, and indeed to curious specta- 
tors looking for excitement seemed a very hum- 
drum sort of affair. Mr. Walpole, the Home 
Secretary, who had long been growing weary of 
the thankless troubles of his office at a time of 
such excitement, and who was not strong enough 
to face the difficulties of the hour, resigned his 
post. Mr. Walpole retained, however, his seat 
in the Cabinet. He was a man highly esteemed 
by all parties ; a man of high principle and of 
amiable character. But he was not equal to the 
occasion when any difficulty arose, and he con- 
trived to put himself almost invariably in the 
wrong when dealing with the Reform League. 
He exerted his authority at a wrong time, and 
in a wrong way; and he generally withdrew 
from his wrong position in somewhat too peni- 
tent and humble an attitude. He strained too far 
the authority of his place, and he did not hold 
high enough its dignity. He was succeeded in 
office by Mr. Gathorne Hardy, who left the Poor 
Law Board to become Home Secretary. 

The Reform Bill then was passed. The " leap 
in the dark" was taken: thus did the Prime- 
minister, Lord Derby, describe the policy of him- 
self and his colleagues. The phrase has become 
historical, and its authorship is invariably as- 
scribed to Lord Derby. It was, in fact, Lord 
Cranborne who first used it. During the de- 
bates in the House of Commons he had taunted 
the Government with taking a leap in the dark. 
Lord Derby adopted the expression, and admit- 
ted it to be a just description of the movement 
which he and his Ministry had made. It is im- 
possible to deny that the Government acted sa- 
gaciously in settling the question so promptly 
and so decisively ; in agreeing tq almost any- 
thing rather than postpone the settlement of the 
controversy even for another year. But one is 
still lost in wonder at the boldness, the audacity, 
with which the Conservative Government threw 
away in succession every principle which they 
had just been proclaiming essential to Conserva- 
tism, and put on Radicalism in its stead. The 
one thing, however, which most people were 
thinking of in the autumn of 1867 was that the 



Reform question was settled at last, and for a 
long time. Mr. Lowe is entitled to the closing 
word of the controversy. The working-men, the 
majority, the people who live in the small houses, 
are enfranchised: "We must now," Mr. Lowe 
said, "at least educate our new masters." 

While this great measure of domestic reform 
was being accomplished a great colonial reform 
was quietly carried out. On February 19, 1867, 
Lord Carnarvon, Secretary for the Colonies, 
moved the second reading of the Bill for the 
Confederation of the North American Provinces 
of the British Empire. This was in fact a meas- 
ure to carry out in practical form the great prin- 
ciples which Lord Durham had laid down in his 
celebrated report. The Bill prepared by Lord 
Carnarvon proposed that the provinces of Onta- 
rio and Quebec, in other words Upper and Lower 
Canada, along with Nova Scotia and New Bruns- 
wick, should be joined in one federation, to be 
called the Dominion of Canada, having a central 
or federal Parliament, and local or state Legis- 
latures. The central Parliament was to consist 
of a Senate and a House of Commons. The 
Senate was to be made up of seventy members 
nominated by the Governor-general for life, on a 
summons from under the Great Seal of Canada. 
The House of Commons was to be filled by 
members elected by the people of the provinces 
according to population, at the rate of one mem- 
ber for every 17,000 persons, and the duration 
of a Parliament was not to be more than five 
years. The executive was vested in the Crown, 
represented of course by the Governor-general. 
The central Parliament manages the common 
affairs ; each province has its own local laws 
and legislature. There is the greatest possible 
variety and diversity in the local svstems of the 
different provinces of the Dominion. The mem- 
bers are elected to the House of Commons on the 
most diverse principles of suffrage. In some of 
the provinces the vote is open ; in others it is 
given by ballot, in secret. The Dominion scheme 
only provided at first for the confederation of 
the two Canadian provinces with Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick. Provision was made, 
however, for the admission of any other prov- 
ince of British North America which should 
desire to follow suit. The newly -constructed 
province of Manitoba, made up out of what 
had been the Hudson's Bay territories, was 
the first to come in. It was admitted into 
the union in 1 S70. British Columbia and Van- 
couver's Island followed in 1871, and Prince 
Edward's Island claimed admission in 1S73. 
The Dominion now embraces the whole of the 
regions constituting British North America, with 
the exception of Newfoundland, which still pre- 
fers its lonely system of quasi-independence. It 
may be assumed, however, that this curious iso- 
lation will not last long; and the Act constitu- 
tuting the Dominion opens the door for the en- 
trance of this latest lingerer outside whenever 
she may think fit to claim admission. 

The idea of a federation of the provinces of 
British North America was not new in 1867, or 
even in the days of Lord Durham. When the 
delegates of the revolted American Colonies were 
discussing among themselves their terms of fed- 
eration, they agreed in their articles of union 
that Canada, " acceding to the Confederation and 
joining in the measures of the United States, 
shall be admitted into and entitled to the ad- 
vantages of the Union.'' No answer to this ap- 
peal was made by either of the Canadas, but the 
idea of union among the British provinces among 
themselves evidently took root then. As early 
as 1S10 a colonist put forward a somewhat elab- 
orate scheme for the union of the provinces. In 
1814 Chief Justice Sewell. of Quebec, submitted 
a plan of union to the Duke of Kent. In 1827 
resolutions were introduced into the Legislative 
Assembly of Upper Canada, having relation 
principally to a combination of the two Canadas, 
but also suggesting something "more politic, 
wise, and generally advantageous ; viz., an union 
of the whole four provinces of North America 
under a viceroyaltv, with a facsimile of that 
great and glorious fabric, the best monument of 
human wisdom, the British Constitution." Noth- 
ing further, however, was done to advance the 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



66 



principle of federation until after the rebellion 
in Canada, and the brief dictatorship of Lord 
Durham. Then, as we have already said, the 
foundation of the system was laid, In 1849 an 
association, called the North American League, 
was formed, which held a meeting in Toronto to 
promote Confederation. In 1854 the Legisla- 
tive Assembly of Nova Scotia discussed and 
adopted resolutions recommending the closer 
connection of the British provinces; and in 
1857 the same province urged the question upon 
the consideration of Mr. Labouchere, afterwards 
Lord Taunton, and then Colonial Secretary. 
Mr. Labouchere seems to have thought that the 
Imperial Government had better not meddle or 
make in the matter, but leave it altogether for 
the spontaneous action of the colonists. In the 
following year the coalition Ministry of Canada, 
during the Governor-generalship of Sir Francis 
Head, made a move by entering into communi- 
cations with the Imperial Government and with 
the other American provinces. The other prov- 
inces hung back, however, and nothing came of 
this effort. Then Nova Scotia tried to get up a 
scheme of union between herself, New Brunswick, 
and Prince Edward's Island. Canada offered 
to enter into the scheme ; and in 1864 Mr. Card- 
well, then Colonial Secretary, gave it his ap- 
proval. New conferences were held in Quebec, 
but the plan was not successful. New Bruns- 
wick seems to have held back this time. It was 
clear, however, that the provinces were steadily 
moving toward an agreement, and that a basis 
of federation would be found before long. The 
maritime provinces always felt some difficulty 
in seeing their way to union with the Canadas. 
Their outlying position and their distance from 
the proposed seat of central government made one 
obvious reason for hesitation. Even at the time 
when the bill for Confederation was introduced 
into the House of Lords, Nova Scotia was still 
holding back. That difficulty, however, was got 
over, and the Act was passed in March, 1867. 
Lord Monck was made the first Governor-gen- 
eral of the new Dominion, and its first Parlia- 
ment met at Ottawa in November of the same 
year. 

In 1869 — we are now somewhat anticipating 

— the Dominion was enlarged by the acquisition 
of the famous Hudson's Bay territory. When 
the Charter of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
which dated from the reign of Charles II., ex- 
pired, in 1869, Lord Granville, then Colonial Sec- 
retary, proposed that the chief part of the Com- 
pany's territories should be transferred to the 
Dominion for £300,000 ; and the proposition 
was agreed to on both sides. The Red River 
country, a portion of the transferred territory, 
rose in rebellion, and refused to receive the new 
Governor. Louis Riel, the insurgent chief, seized 
on Fort Garry and the Company's treasury, and 
proclaimed the independence of the settlement. 
Colonel Wolseley, now Lord Wolseley, was sent 
in command of an expedition which reached 
Fort Garry on August 23, when the insurgents 
submitted without resistance, and the district 
received the name of Manitoba. Thus the Do- 
minion of Canada now stretches from ocean to 
ocean. The population of British North Amer- 
ica did not exceed one million and a half in 1841, 
at the time of the granting of the constitution, 
and it is now over four millions. The revenue 
of the provinces has multiplied more than 
twentyfold during the same time. Canada has 
everything that ought to make a commonwealth 
great and prosperous. The fisheries of her mar- 
itime provinces, the coal and iron of the Atlantic 
and Pacific coasts, the grain-producing regions 
of the North-west, the superb St. Lawrence, 
hardly rivalled on the globe as a channel of com- 
merce from the interior of a country to the ocean 

— all these are guarantees of a great future. 
Equal with Canada in importance are the 

Australian islands. Australia now consists of 
five separate colonies — New South Wales, Vic- 
toria, Western Australia, South Australia, and 
Queensland ; all these are provinces of one vast 
island, the largest island in the world. New 
Zealand and Tasmania are other islands of the 
Australasian group. All these colonies have 
now representative government, with responsible 



ministries and parliamentary Chambers. New 
South Wales is the oldest of the provinces of 
Australia. Its political life may be said to date 
from 1853, when it first received what is fairly 
to be called a constitution. For ten years pre- 
viously it had possessed a sort of legislature, con- 
sisting of a single Chamber, of which half the 
members were nominee, and the other half 
elected. One of the most distinguished mem- 
bers of that Chamber for many years was Mr. 
Lowe, who appears to have learned to hate 
democratic government from watching over its 
earliest infancy, as some women imbibe a dislike 
to all children from having had to do too much 
nursery-work in their girlhood. Victoria, which 
was separated from New South Wales in 1851, 
got her liberal constitution in 1856. The other 
colonies followed by degrees. The constitutional 
systems differ among themselves as to certain 
of their details. The electoral qualification, for 
example, differs considerably. Generally speak- 
ing, however, they may be set down as all alike 
illustrating the principles and exercising the in- 
fluence of representative government. They 
have not got on so far without much confusion 
and many sad mistakes. The constitutional 
controversies and difficulties in Victoria and in 
other Australian colonies are a favorite example 
with some writers and speakers, to show the 
failure of the democratic principle in govern- 
ment. But it is always forgotten that the prin- 
ciple of representative government in a colony 
like Victoria is, as a matter of necessity, that of 
democracy. Even those who believe the aristo- 
cratic influence invaluable in the life of a nation 
must see that New South Wales and Victoria and 
Queensland must somehow contrive to do with- 
out such an influence. An aristocracy cannot be 
imported; nor can -it" be sown in the evening to 
grow up next morning. The colonists are com- 
pelled to construct a system without it. There 
are many difficulties in their way. It is often 
carelessly said that they ought to find the work 
easy enough, because they have the example and 
the experience of England to guide them. But 
they have no such guide. The conditions under 
which the colonies have to create a constitutional 
system are entirely different from those of Eng- 
land ; so different, indeed, that there must be a 
certain danger of going astray simply from try- 
ing to follow England's example under circum- 
stances entirely unlike those of England. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

STRIFE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 

On February 16, 1866, Lord Russell told the 
House of Lords, and Sir George Grey announced 
to the House of Commons, that the Government 
intended to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in 
Ireland, and that both Houses of Parliament 
were to be called together next day for the pur- 
pose of enabling the Ministry to carry out this 
resolve. The next day was Saturday, an unusual 
day for. a Parliamentary sitting at any early part 
of the session ; unusual indeed, when the session 
had only just begun. The Government could 
only excuse such a summons to the Lords and 
Commons on the plea of absolute urgency; and 
the word soon went round in the lobbies that a 
serious discovery had been made, and that a con- 
spiracy of a formidable nature was preparing a 
rebellion in Ireland. The two Houses met next 
day, and a measure was introduced to suspend 
the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland, and give the 
Lord-Lieutenant almost unlimited power to arrest 
and detain suspected persons. It seems almost 
superfluous to say that such a Bill was not allowed 
to pass without some comment, and even some 
opposition, in the House of Commons. Mr. Mill 
spoke against it. Mr. Bright made a speech 
which has always since been regarded as in every 
sense one of the very finest he ever delivered. 
The measure however was run through its three 
readings in both Houses in the course of the day. 
The House of Lords had to keep up their sitting 
until the document should arrive from Osborne to 
authorize the Commissioners to give the Queen's 
assent to the Bill. The Lords, therefore, having 
discussed the subject sufficiently to their satis- 
faction at a comparatively early hour of the even- 



ing, suspended the sitting until eleven at night. 
They then resumed, and waited patiently for the 
authority to come from Osborne, where the 
Queen was staying. Shortly before midnight 
the needful authority arrived, and the Bill be- 
came law, at twenty minutes before one o'clock 
no Sunday morning. 

The Fenian movement differed from nearly all 
previous movements of the same kind in Ireland, 
in the fact that it arose and grew into strength 
without the patronage or the help of any of those 
who might be called the natural leaders of the 
people. In 1798 and in 1848 some men of great 
ability, or strength of purpose, or high position, or 
all attributes combined, made themselves leaders, 
and the others followed. In 1798 the rising 
had the impulse of almost intolerable personal 
as well as national grievance; but it is doubtful 
whether any formidable and organized movement 
might have been made but for the leadership of 
such men as Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald. In 1848 there were such impulses 
as the traditional leadership of Smith O'Brien, 
the indomitable purpose of Mitchel, and the 
impassioned eloquence of Meagher. But Feni- 
anism seemed to have sprung out of the very soil 
of Ireland itself. Its leaders were not men of 
high position, or distinguished name, or proved 
ability. They were not of aristocratic birth ; 
they were not orators ; they were not powerful 
wi iters. It was not the impulse of the American 
Civil War that engendered Fenianism ; although 
that war had great influence on the manner in 
which Fenianism shaped its course. Fenianism 
had been in existence, in fact, although it had 
not got its peculiar name, long before the Ameri- 
can War created a new race of Irishmen — the 
Irish-American soldiers — to turn their energies 
and their military inclination to a new purpose. 

Agitation in the form of secret association had 
never ceased in Ireland. One result of prose- 
cutions for seditious speaking and writing in Ire- 
land is invariably the encouragement of secret 
combination. The suspension of the Habeas 
Corpus Act, in consequence of the 1848 move- 
ment, led, as a matter of course, to secret associa- 
tion. Before the trials of the Irish leaders were 
well over in that year a secret association was 
formed by a large number of young Irishmen in 
cities and towns. It was got up by young men 
of good character and education ; it spread from 
town to town ; it was conducted with the most 
absolute secrecy ; it had no informer in its ranks. 
It had its oath of fidelity and its regular leaders, 
its nightly meetings, and even, to a limited and 
cautious extent, its nightly drillings. It was a 
failure, because in the nature of things it could 
not be anything else. The young men had not 
arms enough anywhere to render them formida- 
ble in any one place ; and the necessity of carry- 
ing on their communications with different towns 
in profound secrecy, and by roundabout ways of 
communication, made a prompt, concerted action 
impossible. After two or three attempts to ar- 
range for a simultaneous rising had failed, or had 
ended only in little abortive and isolated ebulli- 
tions, the young men became discouraged. Some 
of the leaders went to France, some to the United 
States, some actually to England ; and the asso- 
ciation melted away. Some years after this the 
" Phcenix" clubs began to be formed in Ireland. 
They were for the most part associations of the 
peasant class ; they led to some of the ordinary 
prosecutions and convictions, and that was all. 
After the Phcenix associations came the Fe- 
nians. The Fenians are said to have been the 
ancient Irish militia. The Fenian agitation 
began about 1858, and it came to perfection about 
the middle of the American Civil War. A con- 
vention was held in America, and the Fenian 
Association was resolved into a regular organized 
institution. A provisional government was estab- 
lished in New York, with all the array and the 
mechanism of an actual working administration. 

The emigration of the Irish to America had 
introduced an entirely new element into political 
calculations. The Irish grew rapidly in numbers 
and in strength all over the United States. The 
constitutional system adopted there enabled them 
almost at once to become citizens of the Repub- 
lic. They availed themselves of this privilege 



66 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



almost universally. The Irish working-man, 
•who had never probably had any chance of giv- 
ing a vote in his own country, found himself in 
the United States a person of political power, 
whose vote was courted by the leaders of differ- 
ent parties, and whose sentiments were flattered 
by the wire-pullers of opposing factions. He 
was not slow to appreciate the value of this in- 
fluence in its bearing on that political question 
which, in all the sincerity of his American citizen- 
ship, was still the dearest to his heart — the con- 
dition of Ireland. The Irish in the States made 
their political organizations the means of keep- 
ing up a constant agitation, having for its object 
to secure the co-operation of American parties 
in some designs against England. After the 
Civil War the feelings of almost all the political 
parties in the States, in the South as well as in 
the North, were hostile to England. At such a 
moment, and under such a condition of things, it 
is not surprising if many of the Fenian leaders in 
America should have thought it easy or at least 
quite possible to force the hand of the Govern- 
ment, and to bring on a war with England. At 
all events, it is not surprising if they should have 
believed that the American Government would 
put forth little effort to prevent the Fenians from 
using the frontier of the United States as a basis 
of operations against England. 

Meanwhile there began to be a constant mys- 
terious influx of strangers into Ireland. They 
were strangers who for the most part had Celt- 
ic features and the bearing of American sol- 
diers. They distributed themselves throughout 
the towns and villages ; most of them had rela- 
tives and old friends here and there, to whom 
they told stories of the share they had had in 
the big war across the Atlantic and of the prep- 
arations that were making in the States for the 
accomplishment of Irish independence. All this 
time the Fenians in the States were filling the 
columns of friendly journals with accounts of the 
growth of their organization and announcements 
of the manner in which it was to he directed to 
its purpose. After a while things went so far 
that the Fenian leaders in the United States 
issued an address, announcing that their officers 
were going to Ireland to raise an army there for 
the recovery of the country's independence. Of 
course the Government here were soon quite pre- 
pared to receive them ; and indeed the authori- 
ties easily managed to keep themselves informed 
by means of spies of all that was going on in 
Ireland. The spy system was soon flourishing 
in full force. Every considerable gathering of 
Fenians had among its numbers at least one 
person who generally professed a yet fiercer devo- 
tion to the cause than any of the rest, and who 
was in the habit of carrying to Dublin Castle 
every night his official report of what his Fe- 
nian colleagues had been doing. It is positive^ 
stated that in one instance a Protestant detective 
in the pay of the Government actually passed 
himself off as a Catholic, and took the Sacra- 
ment openly in a Catholic church in order to es- 
tablish his Catholic orthodoxy in the eyes of his 
companions. One need not be a Catholic in 
order to understand the grossness of the outrage 
which conduct like this must seem to be in the 
eyes of all who believe in the mysteries of the 
Catholic faith. Meanwhile the Head Centre of 
Fenianism in America, James Stephens, who had 
borne a part in the movement in 1848, arrived 
in Ireland. He was arrested in the company 
of Mr. Charles J. Kickham, the author of many 
poems of great sweetness and beauty ; a man of 
pure and virtuous character. Stephens was com- 
mitted to Richmond Prison, Dublin, early in 
November, 1865 ; but before many days had 
passed the country was startled by the news 
that he had contrived to make his escape. The 
escape was planned with skill and daring. For 
a time it helped to strengthen the impression on 
the minds of the Irish peasantry that in Stephens 
there had at last been found an insurgent leader 
of adequate courage, craft, and good-fortune. 

Stephens disappeared for a moment from the 
stage. In the mean time disputes and dissen- 
sions had arisen among the Fenians in America. 
The schism had gone so far as to lead to the set- 
ting up of two separate associations. There were 



of course distracted plans. One party was for 
an invasion of Canada; another pressed for 
operations in Ireland itself. The Canadian at- 
tempt actually was made. A small body of Fe- 
nians, a sort of advanced guard, crossed the Ni- 
agara River on the night of May 31, 1S6(J, occu- 
pied Fort Erie, and drove back the Canadian 
volunteers who first advanced against them. 
For a moment a gleam of success shone on the 
attempt; but the United States enforced the 
neutrality of their frontier lines with a sudden 
energy and strictness wholly unexpected by the 
Fenians. They prevented any further crossing 
of the river, and arrested several of the leaders 
on the American side. The Canadian authori- 
ties hurried up reinforcements ; several Fenians 
were taken and shot; others recrossed the river, 
and the invasion scheme was over. 

The Fenians then resolved to do something on 
the other side of the Atlantic. One venture was 
a scheme for the capture of Chester Castle. The 
plan was that a sufficient number of the Fenians 
in England should converge towards the ancient 
town of Chester, should suddenly appear there 
on a given day in February, 1867, capture the 
castle, seize the arms they found there, cut the 
telegraph wires, make for Holyhead, but a short 
distance by rail, seize on some vessels there, and 
then steam for the Irish coast. The Government 
were fully informed of the plot in advance ; the 
police were actually on the lookout for the arri- 
val of strangers in Chester, and the enterprise 
melted away. In March, 1867, an attempt at a 
general rising was made in Ireland. It was a 
total failure ; the one thing on which the coun- 
try had to be congratulated was that it failed so 
completely and so quickly as to cause little blood- 
shed. Every influence combined to minimize 
the waste of life. The snow fell that spring as 
it had scarcely ever fallen before in the soft, mild 
climate of Ireland. Silently, unceasingly it came 
down all day long and all night long; it covered 
the roads and the fields; it made the gorges of 
the mountains untenable, and the gorges of the 
mountains were to be the encampments and the 
retreats of the Fenian insurgents. The snow fell 
for many days and nights, and when it ceased 
falling the insurrectionary movement was over. 
The insurrection was literally buried in that un- 
looked-for snow. There were some attacks on 
police barracks in various places — in Cork; in 
Kerry, in Limerick, in Tipperary, in Louth ; there 
were some conflicts with the police; there were 
some shots fired, many captures made, a few lives 
lost; and then for the time at least all was over. 

There was, however, much feeling in England 
as well as in Ireland for some of the Fenian lead- 
ers who now began to be put upon their trials. 
They bore themselves with manliness and dig- 
nity. Some of them had been brave soldiers in 
the American Civil War, and were entitled to 
wear honorable marks of distinction. Many had 
given up a successful career or a prosperous call- 
ing in the United States to take part in what they 
were led to believe would be the great national 
uprising of the Irish people. They spoke up with 
courage in the dock, and declared their perfect 
readiness to die for what they held to be a sacred 
cause. They indulged in no bravado and utter- 
ed no word of repining. One of the leaders, 
Colonel Burke, who had served with distinction 
in the army of the Southern Confederation, was 
sentenced to death in May, 1867. A great pub- 
lic meeting was held in St. James's Hall, London, 
to adopt a memorial praying that the sentence 
might not be carried out. Among those who 
addressed the meeting was Mr. Mill. It was al- 
most altogether an English meeting. The hall 
was crowded with English working-men. The 
Irish element had hardly any direct representa- 
tion there. Yet there was absolute unanimity, 
there was intense enthusiasm in favor of the mit- 
igation of the sentence on Colonel Burke and his 
companions. The great hall rang with cheer 
after cheer as Mr. Mill, in a voice made stronger 
than its wont by the intensity of his emotions, 
pleaded for a policy of mercy. The voice of that 
great meeting was heard in the Ministerial coun- 
cils, and the sentence of death was not inflicted. 

Not many months after this event the world 
was aroused to amazement by the news of the 



daring rescue of Fenian prisoners in Manchester. 
Two Fenian prisoners, named Kelly and Deasy, 
were being conveyed in the prison van from one 
of the police-courts to the borough jail to await 
further examination. On the way the van was 
stopped by a number of armed Fenians, who 
broke it open. In the scuffle a policeman was 
killed. The rescue was accomplished ; the pris- 
oners were hurried away, and were never after 
seen by English officials. The principal rescuers 
were captured and put on their trial for the mur- 
der of the policeman. Five were found guilty: 
their names were Allen, Larkin, O'Brien, Con- 
don or Shore, and Maguire. Allen was a young 
fellow — a mere lad under twenty. The defence 
was that the prisoners only meditated a rescue, 
and that the death of the policeman was but an 
accident. All the five were sentenced to death. 
Then followed an almost unprecedented occur- 
rence. After the trial it was proved that one of 
the five, Maguire, never was near the spot on the 
day of the rescue ; that he was a loyal private in 
the Marines, and no Fenian ; that he never knew 
anything about the plot or heard of it until he 
was arrested. He received a pardon at once, 
that being the only way in which he could he 
extricated from the effect of the mistaken ver- 
dict. 

One other of the five prisoners who were 
convicted together escaped the death sentence. 
This was Condon or Shore, an American by citi- 
zenship, if not by birth. He had undoubtedly 
been concerned in the attempt at rescue; but for 
some reason a distinction was made between him 
and the others. This act of mercy, in itself 
highly commendable, added to the bad effect pro- 
duced in Ireland by the execution of the other 
three men; for it gave rise to the belief that 
Shore had been spared only because the protect- 
ion of the American Government might have- 
been invoked on his behalf. Many strenuous 
attempts were made to procure a commutation 
of the sentence in the cases of the other prison- 
ers. Mr. Bright exerted himself with character- 
istic energy and humanity. Mr. Swinburne, the 
poet, made an appeal to the people of England 
in lines of great power and beauty on behal f of a 
policy of mercy to the prisoners. Lord Derby, 
who had then come to be at the head of the Gov- 
ernment, refused to listen to auy appeal. The 
remaining three, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, 
were executed. 

The excitement caused by the attempt they 
had made and the penalty they paid had hardly 
died away when a crime of a peculiarly atrocious 
nature was committed in the name of Fenianism. 
On December 13 an attempt was made to blow 
up the House of Detention at Clerkemvell. Two 
Fenian prisoners were in the Clerkemvell Hotisa 
of Detention, and some sympathizers outside had 
attempted to rescue them by placing a barrel of 
gunpowder close to the wall of the prison, and 
exploding the powder by means of a match and a 
fuse. About sixty yards of the prison wall were 
blown in, and numbers of small houses in the 
neighborhood were shattered to pieces. Six per- 
sons were killed on the spot ; about six more 
died from the effects of the injuries they received; 
some hundred and twenty persons were wounded. 
The clumsiness of the crime was only surpassed 
by its atrocity. Had the prisoners on whose be- 
half the attempt was made been near the wall at 
the time, they must have shared the fate of those 
who were victimized outside. Had they even 
been taking exercise in the yard, they woidd, in 
all probability, have been killed. They would 
have been taking exercise at the time had it not 
been for a warning the authorities at Scotland 
Yard received two days before, to the effect that 
an attempt at rescue was to be made by means 
of gunpowder and the blowing in of the wall. 
Iu consequence of this warning the governor of 
the prison had the prisoners confined to their 
cells that day; and thus, in all probability, they 
owed their lives to the disclosure of the secret 
plan which their officious and ill-omened admir- 
ers had in preparation for their rescue. It is dif- 
ficult to understand why the prison authorities 
and the police, thus forewarned, did not keep a 
sufficient watch upon the line of prison wall to 
prevent the possibility of any such scheme being 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



67 



put into execution. Five men and a woman 
were put on trial for the crime. The proceed- 
ings against the woman and one of the men were 
withdrawn, three other prisoners were acquitted 
after a long trial ; one man was convicted and 
executed. 

It is not necessary to follow out the steps of 
the Fenian movement any farther. There were 
many isolated attempts ; there were many ar- 
rests, trials, imprisonments, banishments. The 
phenomena of the Fenian movement did not fail 
to impress some statesmanlike minds in England. 
There were some public men who saw that the 
time had come when mere repression must no 
longer be relied upon as a cure for Irish discon- 
tent. While many public instructors lost them- 
selves in vain shriekings over the wickedness of 
Fenianism and the incurable perversity of the 
Irish people, one statesman was already con- 
vinced that the very shock of the Fenian agita- 
tion would arouse public attention to the recog- 
nition of substantial grievance, and to the admis- 
sion that the business of statesmanship was to 
seek out the remedy and provide redress. 

English society was much distressed and dis- 
turbed about the same time by the stories of 
outrages more cruel, and of a conspiracy more 
odious and alarming in its purpose than any that 
could be ascribed to the Fenian movement. It 
began to be common talk that among the trades- 
associations there was systematic terrorizing of 
the worst kind. Ordinary intimidation had long 
been regarded as one of the means by which 
some of the Trades-unions kept their principles 
in force. Now, however, it was common report 
that secret assassination was in many cases the 
doom of those who brought on themselves the 
wrath of the Trades-unions. For many years 
the great town of Sheffield had had a' special 
notoriety in consequence of the outrages of the 
kind that were believed to be committed there. 
When a workman had made himself obnoxious 
to the leaders of some local Trades-union, it oc- 
casionally happened that some sudden and signal 
misfortune befell him. Perhaps his house was 
set on fire ; perhaps a canister of gunpowder was 
exploded under his windows, or some rudely con- 
structed infernal machine was flung into his bed- 
room at midnight. The man himself, suppos- 
ing him to have escaped with his life, felt con- 
vinced that in the attempt to destroy him he saw 
the hand of the union ; his neighbors were of his 
opinion ; but it sometimes happened, neverthe- 
less, that there was no possibility of bringing 
home the charge upon evidence that could satisfy 
a criminal court. The comparative impunity 
which such crimes were enabled to secure made 
the perpetrators of them feel more and more safe 
in their enterprises ; and the result was that out- 
rages began to increase in atrocity, boldness, and 
numbers. The employers offered large rewards 
for the discovery of the offenders ; the Govern- 
ment did the same; but not much came of the 
offers. The employers charged the local Trades- 
unions with being the authors of all the crimes; 
the officials of the unions distinctly and indig- 
nantly denied the charge. In some instances 
they did more. They offered on their own ac- 
count a reward for the detection of the crimi- 
nals, in order that their own innocence might 
thereby be established once for all in the face of 
day. At a public meeting held in Sheffield to 
express public opinion on the subject, the secre- 
tary of one of the local unions, a man named 
Broadhead, spoke out with indignant and vehe- 
ment eloquence in denunciation of the crimes, 
and in protest against the insinuation that they 
were sanctioned by the authority or done with 
the connivance of the trades-organization. 

Nevertheless the Government resolved to un- 
dertake a full investigation into the whole condi- 
tion of the Trades-unions. A Commission was 
appointed, and a bill passed through Parliament 
enabling it to take evidence upon oath. The 
Commissioners sent down to Sheffield three ex- 
aminers to make inquiry as to the outrages. 
The examiners had authority to offer protection 
to any one, even though himself engaged in the 
commission of the outrages, who should give in- 
formation which might lead to the discovery of 
the conspiracy. This offer had its full effect. 



The Government were now so evidently deter- 
mined to get at the root of all the evil, that many 
of those actively engaged in the commission of 
the crimes took fright and believed they had 
best consult for their personal safety. Accord- 
ingly the Commission got as much evidence as 
could be desired, and it was soon put beyond 
dispute that more than one association had sys- 
tematically employed the most atrocious means 
to punish offenders against their self-made laws 
and to deter men from venturing to act in op- 
position to them. The saw-grinders' union in 
Sheffield had been particularly active in such 
work, and the man named William Broadhead, 
who had so indignantly protested the innocence 
of his union, was the secretary of that organiza- 
tion. Broadhead was proved to have ordered, 
arranged, and paid for the murder of at least 
one offender against his authority, and to have 
set on foot in the same way various deeds scarce- 
ly if at all less criminal. The crimes were paid 
for out of the funds of the union. There were 
gradations of outrage, ascending from what might 
be called mere personal annoyance up to the 
serious destruction of property, then to personal 
injury, to mutilation, and to death. Broadhead 
himself came before the examiners and acknowl- 
edged the part he had taken in the direction of 
such crimes. He explained how he had devised 
them, organized them, selected the agents by 
whom they were to be committed, and paid for 
them out of the funds of the union. The men 
whom he selected had sometimes no personal 
resentment against the victims they were bidden 
to mutilate or destroy. They were ordered and 
paid to punish men whom Broadhead considered 
to be offenders against the authority and the in- 
terests of the union, and they did the work obe- 
diently. In Manchester a state of things was 
found to exist only less hideous than that which 
prevailed in Sheffield. Other towns were found 
to be not very far distant from Sheffield and 
Manchester in the audacity and ingenuity of 
their trade outrages. 

The great majority, however, of the Trades- 
unions appeared after the most searching investi- 
gation to be absolutely free from any complici- 
ty in the crimes, or any sanction of them. Men 
of sense began to ask whether society had not it- 
self to blame in some measure even for the crimes 
of the Trades-unions. The law had always dealt 
unfairly and harshly with the trade-associations. 
Public opinion had for a long time regarded them 
as absolutely lawless. There was a time when 
their very existence would have been an infrac- 
tion of the law. For centuries our legislation 
had acted on the principle that the working-man 
was a sei'f of society, bound to work for the sake 
of the employer and on the employer's terms. 
Even down to the period of which we are now 
writing, there was still a marked and severe dis- 
tinction drawn between master and servant, mas- 
ter and workman, in our legislation. In cases 
of breach of contract the remedy against the em- 
ployer was entirely civil ; against the employed, 
criminal. A workman might even be arrested 
on a warrant for alleged breach of contract and 
taken to prison before the case had been tried. 
The laws were particularly stringent in their dec- 
larations against all manner of combination among 
workmen. Any combined effort to raise wages 
would have been treated as conspiracy of a spe- 
cially odious and dangerous order. Down to 1SL'5 
a mere combination of workmen for their own 
protection was unlawful ; but long after 1825 the 
law continued to deal very harshly with what was 
called conspiracy among working-men for trade 
purposes. Not many years ago it was held that 
although a strike could not itself be pronounced 
illegal, yet a combination of workmen to bring 
about a strike was a conspiracy, and was to be 
properly punished by law. In 18G7, the very 
year when the Commission we have described 
held its inquiries at Sheffield and Manchester, 
a decision given by the Court of Queen's Bench 
affirmed that a friendly society, which was also 
a trades-union, had no right to the protection of 
the law in enforcing a claim for a debt. It was 
laid down that because the rules of the society 
appeared to be such as would operate in restraint 
of trade, therefore the society was not entitled to 



the protection of the civil law in any ordinary 
matter of account. Trades-unions were not al- 
lowed to defend themselves against plunder by a 
dishonest member. This extraordinary principle 
was in force for several years after the time at 
which we have now arrived in this history. One 
result of the investigations into the outrages in 
Sheffield and in Manchester was that public at- 
tention was drawn directly to the whole subject; 
the searching light of full, free discussion was. 
turned on to it, and after a while every one began 
to see that the wanton injustice of the law and 
of society in dealing with the associations of 
working-men was responsible for many of the 
errors and even of the crimes into which some of 
the worst of these associations had allowed them- 
selves to be seduced. 

It was not, however, the law alone which had 
set itself for centuries against the working-man. 
Public opinion and legislation were in complete 
agreement as to the rights of Trades - unions. 
For many years the whole body of English pub- 
lic opinion outside the working-class itself was 
entirely against the principle of the unions. It 
was an axiom among all the employing and capi- 
talist classes that trades- organizations were as 
much to be condemned in point of morality as 
they were absurd in the sight of political econo- 
my. All the leading newspapers were constantly 
writing against the Trades-unions at one time ; 
not writing merely as a Liberal paper writes 
against some Tory measure, but as men condemn 
a monstrous heresy. Public opinion was equal- 
ly well satisfied about strikes. Parliament, the 
pulpit, the press, the stage, philosophy, fiction, all 
were for a long time in combination to give forth 
one pronouncement on the subject. A strike was 
something always wicked and foolish ; abstractly 
wicked; foolish to the fundamental depths of its 
theory. But the working-man had often no way 
of asserting his claims effectively except by the 
instrumentality of a strike. A court of law could 
do nothing for him. If he thought his wages 
ought to be raised, or ought not to be lowered, 
a court of law could not assist him. Once it 
would have compelled him to take what was of- 
fered, and work for it or go to prison. Now, in 
better times, it would offer him no protection 
against the most arbitrary conduct on the part of 
an employer. 

In spite of law, in spite of public opinion, the 
Trades-unions went on and prospered. Some of 
them grew to be great organizations, disposing 
of vast funds. Several fought out against em- 
ployers long battles that were almost like a social 
civil war. Sometimes they were defeated ; some- 
times they were victorious ; sometimes they got 
at least so far that each side could claim the vic- 
tory, and wrangle once more historically over the 
point. Many individual societies were badly 
managed and went to pieces. Some were 
made the victims of swindlers, just like other 
institutions among other classes. Some were 
brought into difficulties simply because of the 
childlike ignorance of the most elementary prin- 
ciples of political economy with which they were 
conducted. Still, the Trades-union, taken as a 
whole, became stronger and stronger every day. 
It became part of the social life of the working- 
classes. At last it began to find public opinion 
giving way before it. Some eminent men, of 
whom Mr. Mill was the greatest, had long been 
endeavoring to get the world to recognize the 
fact that a strike is not a thing which can be 
called good or bad until we know its object and 
its history ; that the men who strike may be 
sometimes right, and that they may have some- 
times been successful. But as usual in this 
country, and as another evidence, doubtless, of 
what is commonly called the practical character 
of Englishmen, the right of the trades-unions to 
existence and to social recognition was chiefly 
impressed upon the public mind by the strength 
of the organization itself. Many men came at 
once to the frankly admitted conclusion that 
there must be some principles, economic as well 
as others, to justify the existence and the growth 
of so remarkable an institution. The Sheffield 
outrages, even while they horrified every one, 
yet made most persons begin to feel that the 
time had come when there must not be left in 



68 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



the mouth of the worst and most worthless mem- 
ber of a Trades-union any excuse for saying any 
longer that the law was unjust to him and to his 
■class. A course of legislation was then begun 
which was not made complete for several years 
after. We may, however, anticipate here the 
measures which passed in 1875, and show how 
at length the fair claims of the unions were recog- 
nized. The masters and workmen were placed 
on absolute equality as regarded the matter of 
contract. They had been thus equal for many 
years in other countries ; in France, Germany, 
and Italy, for example. A breach of contract 
resulting in damages was to be treated on either 
side as giving rise to a civil and not a criminal 
remedy. There was to be no imprisonment, ex- 
cept as it is ordered in other cases, by a county 
court judge ; that is, a man may be committed 
to prison who has been ordered to pay a certain 
sum, and out of contumacy will not pay it, al- 
though payment is shown to be within his power. 
No combination of persons is to be deemed crim- 
inal if the act proposed to be done would not 
be criminal when done by one person. Several 
breaches of contract were, however, very proper- 
ly made the subject of special legislation. If, 
for example, a man "wilfully and maliciously" 
broke his contract of service to a gas or water 
company, knowing that by doing so he might 
cause great public injury, he might be imprison- 
ed. It was made strictly unlawful and punish- 
able by imprisonment to hide or injure the tools 
of workmen in order to prevent them from do- 
ing their work ; or to " beset " workmen in order 
to prevent them from getting to their place of 
business, or to intimidate them into keeping away 
from it. In principle this legislation accomplish- 
ed all that any reasonable advocate of the claims 
of the Trades-unions could have demanded. It 
put the masters and workmen on an equality. 
It recognized the right of combination for every 
purpose which is not itself actually contrary to 
law. It settled the fact that the right of a com- 
bination is just the same as the right of an in- 
dividual. 

The civil laws which dealt so harshly for a 
long time with Trades-unionism dealt unfairly 
too with the friendly societies, with that strong 
and sudden growth of our modem days — Co- 
operation. If working-men can combine effect- 
ively and in large numbers for a benefit society 
or for a strike, why should they not also co- 
operate for the purpose of supplying each other 
with good and cheap food and clothing, and di- 
viding among themselves the profits which would 
otherwise be distributed among various manu- 
facturers and shop-keepers ? This is a question 
which had often been put before, without any 
very decided practical result coming of it ; but 
in 1844, or thereabouts, it was put and tested in 
a highly practical manner in the North of Eng- 
land. The association called "The Equitable 
Pioneers' Co-operative Store " was founded in 
Rochdale by a few poor flannel- weavers. The 
times were bad ; there had been a failure of a 
savings-bank, involving heavy loss to many 
classes ; and these men cast about in their minds 
for some way of making their little earnings go 
far. These Rochdale weavers were thoughtful 
men. Most of them were, or rather had been, 
followers of Robert Owen, a dreamy philanthro- 
pist and Socialist, who had written books advo- 
cating a modified form of community of proper- 
ty, and who bad tried the experiment of found- 
ing a communistic colony in America, which was 
entirely unsuccessful, and whose doctrines were 
followed by a large number of people, who called 
themselves Owenites, after him. One decidedly 
good teaching which they had from Robert Owen 
was a dislike to the credit system. They saw 
that the shop-keeper who gave his goods at long 
credit must necessarily have to charge a much 
higher price than the actual value of the goods, 
and even of a reasonable profit, in order to make 
up for his having to live out of his money, and 
to secure himself against bad debts. They also 
saw that the credit system leads to almost in 
cessant litigation ; and, besides, that litigation 
means the waste of time and money. Some of 
them, it appears, had a conscientious objection 
to the taking of an oath. It occurred to these 



Rochdale weavers, therefore, that if they could 
get together a little capital they might start a 
shop or store of their own, and thus be able to 
supply themselves with better goods, and at 
cheaper rates, than by dealing with the ordinary 
tradesmen. Twenty - eight of them began by 
subscribing twopence a week each. The number 
of subscribers was afterwards increased to forty, 
and the weekly subscription to threepence. When 
they had got £28 they thought they had capital 
enough to begin their enterprise with. They 
took a small shop in a little back street, called 
Toad Lane. After the shop had been fitted up 
the equitable pioneers had only £14 left to stock 
it ; and the concern looked so small and shabby 
that the hearts of some of the pioneers might 
have well-nigh sunk within them. A neighbor- 
ing shop-keeper, feeling utter contempt for the 
enterprise, declared that he could remove the 
whole stock-in-trade in a wheelbarrow. The 
wheelbarrow-load of goods soon, however, be- 
came too heavy to be carried away in the hold 
of a great steamer. The pioneers began by sup- 
plying each other with groceries ; they went on 
to butcher's meat, and then to all sorts of cloth- 
ing. From supplying goods they progressed on 
to the manufacturing of goods ; they had a corn 
mill and a cotton mill, and they became to a 
certain extent a land and a building society. 
They set aside part of their profits for a library 
and reading-room, and they founded a co-opera- 
tive Turkish bath. Their capital of £28 swelled 
in sixteen years to over £120,000. Cash pay- 
ments and the division of profits were the main 
sources of this remarkable prosperity. Not 
merely did the shareholders share in the profits, 
but all the buyers received an equitable percent- 
age on the price of every article they bought. 
Each purchaser, on paying for what he had 
bought, received a ticket which entitled him to 
that percentage at each division of profit, and 
thus many a poor man found at the quarterly 
division that he had several shillings, perhaps a 
pound, coming to him, which seemed at first to 
have dropped out of the clouds, so little direct 
claim did he appear to have on it. He had not 
paid more for his goods than he would have had 
to pay at the cheapest shop ; he had got them 
of the best quality the price could buy ; and at 
the end of each period he found that he had a 
sum of money standing to his credit, which he 
could either take away or leave to accumulate 
at the store. 

Many other institutions were soon following 
the example of the Rochdale pioneers. Long 
before their capital had swelled to the amount 
we have mentioned, the North of England was 
studded with co-operative associations of one 
kind or another. Many of them proved sad 
failures. Some started on chimerical principles ; 
some were stupidly, some selfishly mismanaged. 
There came seasons of heavy strain on labor and 
trade, when the resources of many were taxed to 
their uttermost, and when some even of the best 
seemed for a moment likely to go under. The 
co-operative associations suffered, in fact, the trials 
and vicissitudes that must be met by all institu- 
tions of men. But the one result is clear and 
palpable — they have as a whole been a most re- 
markable success. Of late years the principle 
has been taken up by classes who would have 
appeared at one time to have little in common 
with the poor flannel-weavers of Rochdale. The 
civil servants of the Crown first adopted the idea ; 
and now in some of the most fashionable quarters 
of London the carriages of some of their most 
fashionable residents are seen at the crowded 
doors of the co-operative store. It may safely 
be predicted that posterity will not let the co- 
operative principle die. It has taken firm hold 
of our modern society. It seems certainly des- 
tined to develop rather than fade ; to absorb 
rather than be absorbed. The law was much 
against the principle in the beginning. Before 
1852 all co-operative associations bad to come un- 
der the Friendly Societies Act, which prohibited 
their dealing with any but their own members. 
An Act obtained in 1852 allowed them to sell to 
persons not members of their body. For many 
years they were not permitted to hold more 
than an acre of land. More lately this absurd 



restriction was abolished, and they were allowed 
to trade in land, to hold land to any extent, and 
to act as building societies. The friendly socie- 
ties, which were in their origin merely working- 
men's clubs, have been the subject of legislation 
since the later years of the last century. It may 
be doubted whether, even up to this day, that 
legislation has not done them more harm than 
good. The law neither takes them fairly under 
its protection and control, nor leaves them to do 
the best they can for themselves uncontrolled and 
on their own responsibility. At one time the sort 
of left-handed recognition which the law gave 
them had a direct tendency to do barm. An offi- 
cer was appointed by the Government, who might 
inspect the manner in which the accounts of the 
societies were kept, and certify that they were in 
conformity with the law ; but he had no authority 
to look actually into the affairs of a society. The 
mere fact, however, that there was any manner 
of Government certificate proved sadly mislead- 
ing to thousands of persons. Some actually re- 
garded the certificate as a guarantee given by the 
Government that their money was safe ; a guar- 
antee which hound the State to make good any 
loss to the depositors. Others, who were not 
quite so credulous, were convinced at least that 
the certificate testified on Government authority 
that the funds of the society were safe, and that 
its accounts and its business were managed on 
principles of strict economical soundness. The 
Government official certified nothing of the kind. 
The certificate given to the friendly societies 
merely certified that on the face of things the 
accounts seemed all right. Many of the societies 
were sadly mismanaged ; in certain of them there 
was the grossest malversation of funds ; in some 
towns much distress was caused among the depos- 
itors in consequence. The societies had to pass, 
in fact, through a stage of confusion, ignorance, 
and experiment, and it is perhaps only to be won- 
dered at that there was not greater mismanage- 
ment, greater blundering, and more lamentable 
failure. 

In the summer of 1867 England received with 
strange welcome a strange visitor. It was the 
Sultan of Turkey who came to visit England — 
the Sultan Abdul- Aziz, whose career was to end 
ten years after in dethronement and suicide. 
Abdul- Aziz was the first Sultan who ever set 
his foot on English soil. He was welcomed 
with a show of enthusiasm which made cool 
observers wonder and shrug their shoulders. 
There was an insurrection going on in the 
Greek island of Crete, which was under Turk- 
ish rule, and the Sultan's generals were doing 
cruel work among the unfortunate rebels of that 
Greek race with which the people of England 
had so long and so loudly professed the deepest 
sympathy. Yet the Sultan was received by 
Englishmen with what must have seemed to 
him a genuine outburst of national enthusiasm. 
As a matter of course he received the usual 
court entertainments; but he was also enter- 
tained gorgeously by the Lord Mayor and Cor- 
poration of London ; he went in state to the 
Opera and the Crystal Palace ; he saw a review 
of the fleet, in company with the Queen, at Spit- 
head ; he was run after and shouted for by vast 
crowds wherever he showed his dark and mel- 
ancholy face, on which even then the sullen 
shadow of the future might seem to have been 
cast. His presence threw completely into the 
background that of his nominal vassal the Vice- 
roy of Egypt, who might otherwise have been 
a very sufficient lion in himself. Abdul- Aziz 
doubtless believed in the genuineness of the re- 
ception, and thought it denoted a real and last- 
ing sympathy with him and his State. He did 
not know how easily crowds are gathered and 
the fire of popular enthusiasm is lighted in Lon- 
don. The Shah of Persia was to experience 
the same sort of reception not long after; Gari- 
baldi bad enjoyed it not long before; Kossuth 
had had it in his time. Some of the newspa- 
pers politely professed to believe that the visit 
would be productive of wonderful results to 
Turkey. The Sultan, it was suggested, would 
surely return to Constantinople with his head 
full of new ideas gathered up in the West. He 
would go back much impressed by the evidences 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



69 



of the blessings of our constitutional govern- 
ment, and the progressive nature of our civic 
institutions. He would read a lesson in the 
glass and iron of the Crystal Palace, the solid 
splendors of the Guildhall. He would learn 
something from the? directors of the railway 
companies, and something from the Lord May- 
or. The Cattle Show at the Agricultural Hall 
could not be lost on his observant eyes. The 
result would be a new era for Turkey — another 
new era: the real new era this time. The poor 
Sultan's head must have been sadly bemused by 
all the various sights he was forced to see. He 
left England just before the public had had 
time to get tired of him ; and the new era did 
not appear to be any nearer for Turkey after 
his return home. 

Mr. Disraeli astonished and amused the public 
towards the close of I8G7 by a declaration he 
made at a dinner which was given in his honor 
at Edinburgh. The company were surprised to 
learn that he had for many years been a thor- 
ough reformer and an advocate of popular suf- 
frage, and that he had only kept his convic- 
tions to himself because it was necessary to in- 
stil them gently into the minds of his political 
colleagues. "I had," he said, "to prepare the 
mind of the country, and to educate — if it be 
not arrogant to use such a phrase — to educate 
our party. It is a large party, and requires its 
attention to be called to questions of this kind 
with some pressure. I had to prepare the mind 
of Parliament and the country on this question 
of Reform." All the time, therefore, that Mr. 
Disraeli was fighting against Reform Bills he 
was really trying to lead his party towards the 
principles of popular reform. Some members 
of the party which Mr. Disraeli professed to 
have cleverly educated were a little scandalized 
and even shocked at the frank composure of his 
confession ; some were offended ; it seemed to 
them that their ingenious instructor had made 
fools of them. But the general public, as usu- 
al, persisted in refusing to take Mr. Disraeli 
seriously, or to fasten on him any moral respon- 
sibility for anything he might say or do. That 
was his way ; if he were anything but that, he 
would not be Mr. Disraeli ; he would not be 
leader of the House of Commons ; he would not 
be Prime-minister of England. 

For to that it soon came ; came at last. Only 
the opportunity was lately needed to make him 
Prime-minister; and that opportunity came ear- 
ly in 1868. Lord Derby's health had for some 
time been so weakly that he was anxious to get 
rid of the trouble of office as soon as possible. 
In February, 18G8, he became so ill that his con- 
dition excited the gravest anxiety. He rallied, 
indeed, and grew much better; but he took the 
warning and determined on retiring from office. 
He tendered his resignation, and it was accept- 
ed by the Queen. It fell to the lot of his son, 
Lord Stanley, to make the announcement in the 
House of Commons. There was a general re- 
gret felt for the retirement of Lord Derby from 
a loading place in politics ; but as soon as it ap- 
peared that his physical condition was not actu- 
ally hopeless, men's minds turned at once from 
him tu his successsor. No one could now doubt 
that Mr. Disraeli's time had come. The patient 
career, the thirty years' war against difficulties, 
were to have the long -desired reward. The 
Queen sent for Mr, Disraeli, and invited him to 
assume Lord Derby's vacated place and to form 
a Government. By a curious coincidence the 
autograph letter containing this invitation was 
brought from Osborne to the new Prime-minis- 
ter by General Grey, the man who defeated Mr. 
Disraeli in his first endeavor to enter the House 
of Commons. That was the contest for Wy- 
combe in June, 1832. It was a memorable con- 
test in many ways. It was the last election un- 
der the political conditions which the Reform Bill 
brought to a close. The Reform Bill had only 
just been passed when the Wycombe election took 
place, and had not come into actual operation. 
The state of the poll is amusing to read of now. 
Thirty-five voters all told registered their suf- 
frages. Twenty-three voted for Colonel Grey, 
as he then was ; twelve were induced to support 
Mr. Disraeli. Then Mr. Disraeli retired from 



the contest, and Colonel Grey, was proclaimed 
the representative of Wycombe by a majority of 
eleven. Nor had Wycombe exhausted in the 
contest all its electoral strength. There were, 
it seemed, two voters more in the borough who 
would have polled, if it were necessary, on the 
side of Colonel Grey. Mr. Disraeli's successful 
rival in that first struggle for a seat in Parlia- 
ment was now the bearer of the Queen's invita- 
tion to Mr. Disraeli to become Prime-minister 
of England. The public in general were well 
pleased that Mr. Disraeli should reach the object 
of his ambition. It seemed only the fit return 
for his long and hard struggle against so many 
adverse conditions. He had battled with his evil 
stars ; and his triumph over them pleased most 
of those who had observed the contest. 

The new Premier made few changes in his 
Cabinet. His former lieutenant, Lord Cairns, 
had been for some time one of the Lords Justices 
of the Court of Chancery. Mr. Disraeli made 
him Lord Chancellor. In order to do this he 
had to undertake the somewhat ungracious task 
of informing Lord Chelmsford, who sat on the 
wool-sack during Lord Derby's tenure of office, 
that his services would no longer be required. 
Lord Chelmsford's friends were very angry, and 
a painful controversy began in the newspapers. 
It was plainly stated by some of the aggrieved 
that Lord Chemsford had been put aside because 
he had shown himself too firmly independent in 
his selection of judges. But there seems no rea- 
son to ascribe Mr. Disraeli's action to any other 
than its obvious and reasonable motive. His 
Ministry was singularly weak in debating talent 
in the House of Lords. Lord Cairns was one 
of the best parliamentary debaters of the day ; 
Lord Chelmsford was hardly entitled to be called 
a parliamentary debater at all. Lord Cairns was 
a really great lawyer ; Lord Chelmsford was only 
a lawyer of respectable capacity. Lord Chelms- 
ford was at that time nearly seventy-five years 
old, and Lord Cairns was a quarter of a century 
younger. It was surely not necessary to search 
for ungenerous or improper motives to explain 
the act of the new Prime-minister in preferring 
the one man to the other. Mr. Disraeli merely 
did his duty. Nothing could justify a Minister 
who had the opportunity and the responsibility 
of such a choice in deciding to retain Lord 
Chelmsford rather than to bring in Lord Cairns. 

No other change was important. Mr. Ward 
Hunt, a respectable country gentleman of no 
great position and of moderate abilities, became 
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the room of Mr. 
Disraeli. Mr. Walpole, who had been in the 
Cabinet for some time without office, retired 
from the Administration altogether. A good 
deal of work was got through in the session. A 
bill was introduced to put a stop to the system 
of public executions, and passed with little diffi- 
culty. The only objection raised was urged by 
those who thought the time had come for abolish- 
ing the system of capital punishment altogether. 
Public executions had long grown to be a scan- 
dal to the country. Every voice had been cry- 
ing out against them. A public execution in 
London was a scene to fill an observer with 
something like a loathing for the whole human 
race. Through all the long night before the ex- 
ecution the precincts of the prison became a biv- 
ouac ground for the ruffianism of the metropolis. 
The roughs, the professional robbers, and the 
prospective murderers held high festival there. 
The air reeked with the smell of strong drink, 
with noise and oaths and blasphemy. The soul 
took its flight as if it were a trapeze-performer 
in a circus. The moral effect of the scene as an 
example to evil-doers was about as great as the 
moral effect of a cock-fight. The demoralizing 
effect, however, was broad and deep. It may be 
doubted whether one in ten thousand of those 
who for mere curiosity came to see an execution 
did not go away a worse creature than he had 
come. Since the change made in 1868 the exe- 
cution takes place within the precincts of the 
jail ; it is witnessed by a few selected persons, 
usually including representatives of the press, and 
it is certified by the verdict of a coroner's jury. 

Another change of ancient system was made 
by the measure which took away from the House 



of Commons the power of deciding election pe- 
titions. The long-established custom was, that 
an election petition was referred to a Committee 
of the House of Commons, who heard the evi- 
dence on both sides, and then decided by a 
majority of votes as to the right of the person 
elected to hold the seat. The system was open 
to some obvious objections. The one great and 
crying evil of our electioneering was then the brib- 
ery and corruption which attended it. A Parlia- 
mentary Committee could hardly be expected to 
deal very stringently with bribery, seeing that 
most of the members of the Committee were sure 
to have carried on or authorized bribery on their 
own account. A false public conscience had 
grown up with regard to bribery. Few men 
held it really in hatred. The country gentleman 
whose own vote, when once he had been elected, 
was unpurchasable by any money bribe, thought 
it quite a natural and legitimate thing that he 
should buy his seat by corrupting voters. Then, 
again, the decision of a Parliamentary Commit- 
tee was very often determined by the political 
opinions of the majority of its members. Acute 
persons used to say, that when once the Commit- 
tee had been formed they could tell what its de- 
cision would be. "Show me the men, and I'll 
show you the decision," was the principle. It 
was not always found to be so in practice. A 
Committee with a Conservative majority did 
sometimes decide against a Conservative candi- 
date. A Committee with a majority of Whigs 
has been known to unseat a Whig occupant. 
But in general the decision of the Committee 
was either influenced by the political opinions of 
its majority, or, what was nearly as bad so far as 
public opinion was concerned, it was believed to 
be so influenced. There had therefore been for 
a long time an opinion growing up that some- 
thing must be done to bring about a reform, and 
in 1867 a Parliamentary Select Committee re- 
ported in favor of abandoning altogether the sys- 
tem of referring election petitions to a tribunal 
composed of members of the House of Commons. 
The proposal of this Committee was, that every 
petition should be referred to one of the Judges 
of the superior courts at Westminster, with pow- 
er to decide both law and fact, and to report not 
only as to the seat but as to the extent of bribery 
and corruption in the constituency. The Judges 
themselves strongly objected to having such du- 
ties imposed upon them. The Lord Chief Jus- 
tice stated on their behalf that he had consulted 
with them, and was charged by them one and 
all to convey to the Lord Chancellor "their 
strong and unanimous feeling of insuperable ob- 
jection to undertaking functions the effect of 
which would be to lower and degrade the judicial 
office, and to destroy, or at all events materially 
impair, the confidence of the public in the thor- 
ough impartiality and inflexible integrity of the 
Judges, when in the course of their ordinary du- 
ties political matters come incidentally before 
them." 

Notwithstanding the objections of the Judges, 
however, the Government, after having made 
one or two unsuccessful experiments at a meas- 
ure to institute a new court for the trial of 
election petitions, brought in a bill to refer such 
petitions to a single Judge, selected from a list 
to be made by arrangement among the Judges 
of the three superior courts. This bill, which 
was to be in operation for three years as an ex- 
periment, was carried without much difficulty. 
It has been renewed since that time, and slightly 
altered. The principle of referring election pe- 
titions to the decision of a legal tribunal remains 
in force, anil it is very unlikely indeed that the 
House of Commons will ever recover its ancient 
privilege. Many members of that House still 
regret the change. They say, and not unreason- 
ably, that with time and the purifying effect of 
public opinion the objections to the old system 
would have died away. A Committee of the 
House of Commons would have come to regard 
bribery as all honest and decent men must, in 
time, regard it. They would acknowledge it a 
crime and brand it accordingly. So, too, it is 
surely probable that members of the House of 
Commons sitting to hear an election petition 
would have got over that low condition of politi- 



70 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



cal morals which allowed them to give, or be 
suspected of giving, their decision for partisan 
purposes without regard to facts and to justice. 
It is right to say that none of the effects antici- 
pated by the Chief Justice were felt in England. 
The impartiality of the Judges was never called 
in question. In Ireland it was otherwise, at 
least in some instances. Judges are rarely ap- 
pointed in Ireland who have not held law office ; 
and law office is usually obtained by Parliamen- 
tary, in other words, by partisan service. There 
is not, therefore, always the same confidence in 
the impartiality of the Judges in Ireland that 
prevails in England, and it must be owned that, 
in one or two instances at least, the effect of re- 
ferring an election petition to the decision of an 
Irish Judge was not by any means favorable to 
the public faith, either in the dignity or impar- 
tiality of the Bench. Of late years some really 
stringent measures have been taken against 
bribery. Several boroughs have been disfran- 
chised altogether because of the gross and seem- 
ingly ineradicable corruption that prevailed there. 
Time, education, and public opinion will probably 
before long cleanse our political system of the 
stain of bribery. Before long surely it will be 
accounted as base to give as to take a bribe. 

The House of Lords, too, abandoned about 
this time one of their ancient usages — the cus- 
tom of voting by proxy. A Select Committee 
of the Peers had recommended that the practice 
should be discontinued. It was defended, of 
course, as every antiquated and anomalous prac- 
tice is sure to be defended. It was urged, for 
example, that no men can be better qualified to 
understand the great political questions of the 
day than members of the House of Peers who 
are employed in the diplomatic service abroad, 
and that it is unfair to exclude these men from 
affirming their opinion by a vote, even though 
they cannot quit their posts and return home to 
give the vote in person. This small grievance, 
if it were one, was very properly held to be of 
little account when compared with the obvious 
objections to the practice. The House of Lords, 
however, were not willing absolutely and forever 
to give up the privilege. They only passed a 
standing order "that the practice of calling for 
proxies on a division be discontinued, and that 
two days' notice be given of any motion for the 
suspension of the order." It is not likely that 
any attempt will be made to suspend the order 
and renew the obsolete practice. 

The Government ventured this year on the 
bold but judicious step of acquiring possession 
of all the lines of telegraph, and making the con- 
trol of communication by wire a part of the busi- 
ness of the Post-office. They did not succeed 
in making a very good bargain of it, and for a 
time the new management resulted in the most 
distracting confusion. But the country highly 
approved of the purchase. The Post-office has 
long been one of the best managed departments 
of the Civil Service. 

An important event in the year's history was 
the successful conclusion of the expedition into 
Abyssinia. A vague, mysterious interest hung 
around Abyssinia. It is a land which claims to 
have held the primitive Christians, and to have 
the bones of St. Mark among its treasury of sa- 
cred relics. It held fast to the Christian faith, 
according to its own views of that faith, when 
Egypt flung it aside after the Arab invasion. 
The Abyssinians trace the origin of their empire 
back to the time of Solomon, when the Queen 
of Sheba visited him. The Emperor or King of 
Abyssinia was the Prester John, the mysterious 
king-priest of the Middle Ages. If Sir John 
Mandeville may be accepted as any authority, 
that traveller avers that the title of Prester John 
rose from the fact that one of the early Kings of 
Abyssinia went with a Christian knight into a 
Christian church in Egypt and was so charmed 
with the service that he vowed he would thence- 
forth take the title of priest. He further de- 
clared, that "he wolde have the name of the 
first preest that wente out of the Chirche ; and 
his name was John." The controversy over 
Bruce's travels in Abyssinia excited in 1790 a 
curiosity as to the land of Prester John, which 
was revived in 1865 by the fact that a number 



of British subjects, men and women, were held 
in captivity by Theodore, King of Abyssinia. 
Among the captives in Theodore's hands were 
Captain Cameron, her Majesty's Consul at Masso- 
wah, with his secretary and some servants ; Mr. 
Hormuzd Rassam, a Syrian Christian and natur- 
alized subject of the Queen ; Lieutenant Pri- 
deaux, and Dr. Blanc. These men were made 
prisoners while actually engaged on official busi- 
ness of the English Government, and the expedi- 
tion was therefore formally charged to recover 
them. But there were several other captives 
as well, whom the Commander-in-chief was en- 
joined to take under his protection. There were 
German missionaries and their wives and chil- 
dren, some of the women being English ; some 
teachers, artists, and workmen, all European. 
The quarrel which led to the imprisonment of 
these people was of old standing. Some of the 
missionaries had been four years in duress before 
the expedition was sent out to their rescue. In 
April, 1865, Lord Chelmsford had called the at- 
tention of the House of Lords to the treatment 
which certain British subjects were then receiv- 
ing at the hands of Theodore, the Negus, or 
supreme ruler of Abyssinia. Theodore was a 
usurper. Few Eastern sovereigns who have in 
any way made their mark on history, from Ha- 
roun-al-Raschid and Saladin downwards, can be 
described by any other name than that of usurper. 
Theodore seems to have been a man of strong 
barbaric nature, a compound of savage virtue and 
more than savage ambition and cruelty. He 
was open to passionate and lasting friendships ; 
his nature was swept by stormy gusts of anger 
and hatred. His moods of fury and of mildness 
came and went like the thunderstorms and calms 
of a tropic region. He had had a devoted friend- 
ship for Mr. Plowden, a former English Consul 
at Massowah, who had actually lent Theodore 
his help in putting down a rebellion, and was 
killed by the rebels in consequence. When 
Theodore had crushed the rebellion he slaugh- 
tered more than a hundred of the rebel prisoners 
as a sacrifice to the memory of his English friend. 
Captain Cameron was sent to succeed Mr. Plow- 
den. It should be stated that neither Mr. Plow- 
den nor Captain Cameron was appointed Consul 
for any part of Abyssinia. Massowah is an isl- 
and off the African shore of the Red Sea. It 
is in Turkish ownership, and forms no part of 
Abyssinia, although it is the principal starting- 
point to the interior of that country from Egypt, 
and the great outlet for Abyssinian trade. Con- 
suls were sent to Massowah, according to the 
terms of Mr. Plowden's appointment in 184S, 
"for the protection of British trade with Abys- 
sinia and with the countries adjacent thereto." 
Mr. Plowden, however, had made himself an 
active ally of King Theodore, a course of pro- 
ceeding which naturally gave great dissatisfac- 
tion to the English Government. Captain Cam- 
eron, therefore, received positive instructions to 
take no part in the quarrels of Theodore and his 
subjects, and was reminded by Lord John Rus- 
sell that he held "no representative character 
in Abyssinia." It probably seemed to Theodore 
that the attitude of England was altered and un- 
friendly, and thus the dispute began which led 
to the seizure of the missionaries. Captain 
Cameron seems to have been much wanting in 
discretion, and Theodore suspected him of in- 
triguing with Egypt. Theodore wrote a letter 
to Queen Victoria requesting help against the 
Turks, and for some reason the letter remained 
unanswered. A story went that Theodore cher- 
ished a strong ambition to become the husband 
of the Queen of England, and even represented 
that his descent from the Queen of Sheba made 
him not unworthy of such an alliance. Whether 
he ever put his proposals into formal shape or 
not, it is certain that misunderstandings arose ; 
that Theodore fancied himself slighted ; and 
that he wreaked his wrongs by seizing all the 
British subjects within his reach and throwing 
them into captivity. They were put in chains, 
and kept in Magdala, his rock-based capital. 
Consul Cameron was among the number. He 
had imprudently gone back into Abyssinia from 
Massowah, and was at once pounced upon by the 
furious descendant of Prester John. 



The English Government had a difficult task 
before them. It seemed not unlikely that the 
first movement made by an invading expedition 
might be the signal for the massacre of the pris- 
oners. The effect of conciliation was therefore 
tried in the first instance. Mr. Rassam, who 
held the office of Assistant British Resident at 
Aden, a man who had acquired some distinction 
under Mr. Layard in exploring the remains of 
Nineveh and Babylon, was sent on a mission to 
Theodore with a message from Queen Victoria. 
Lieutenant Prideaux and Dr. Blanc were ap- 
pointed to accompany him. Theodore played 
with Mr. Rassam for a while, and then added 
him and his companions to the number of the 
captives. Theodore seems to have become more 
and more possessed with the idea that the English 
Government were slighting him ; and one or two 
unlucky mishaps or misconceptions gave him 
some excuse for cherishing the suspicion in his 
jealous and angry mind. At last an ultimatum 
was sent by Lord Stanley, demanding the release 
of the captives within three months on penalty 
of war. This letter does not seem to have ever 
reached the King's hands. The Government 
made preparations for war, and appointed Sir 
Robert Napier, now Lord Napier of Magdala, 
then Commander-in-chief of the army of Bom- 
bay, to conduct the expedition. A winter sitting 
of Parliament was held in November, 1867, sup- 
plies were voted, and the expeditionary force set 
out from Bombay. 

The expedition was well managed. Its work 
was, if we may use a somewhat homely expres- 
sion, done to time. The military difficulties were 
not great, but the march had to be made across 
some four hundred miles of a mountainous and 
roadless country. The army had to make its 
way, now under burning sun, and now amidst 
storms of rain and sleet, through broken and 
perplexing mountain gorges and over mountain 
heights ten thousand feet above the sea -level. 
Anything like a skilful resistance, even such re- 
sistance as savages might well have been expect- 
ed to make, would have placed the lives of all 
the force in the utmost danger. The mere work 
of carrying the supplies safely along through such 
a country was of itself enough to keep the ener- 
gies of the invading army on the utmost strain. 
Meanwhile the captives were dragging out life in 
the very bitterness of death. The King still os- 
cillated between caprices of kindness and im- 
pulses of cruelty. He sometimes strolled in upon 
the prisoners in careless undress ; perhaps in Eu- 
ropean shirt and trousers, without a coat ; and he 
cheerily brought with him a bottle of wine, which 
he insisted on the captives sharing with him. At 
other times he visited them in the mood of one 
who loved to feast his eyes on the anticipatory 
terrors of the victims he has determined to de- 
stroy. He had still great faith in the fighting 
power of his Abyssinians. Sometimes he was in 
high spirits, and declared that he longed for an 
encounter with the invaders. At other moments, 
however, and when the steady, certain march of 
the English soldiers was bringing them nearer 
and nearer, he seems to have lost heart and be- 
come impressed with a boding conviction that 
nothing would ever go well with him again. One 
account describes him as he looked into the gath- 
ering clouds of an evening sky and drew melan- 
choly auguries of his own fate. Sir Robert 
Napier arrived in front of Magdala in the begin- 
ning of April, 1868. One battle was fought on 
the 10th of the month. Perhaps it ought not to 
be called a battle. It is better to say that the 
Abyssinians made such an attack on the English 
troops as a bull sometimes makes on a railway 
train in full motion. The Abyssinians attacked 
with wild courage and spirit. The English weap- 
ons and the English discipline simply swept the 
assailants away. Others came on ; wild charges 
were made again and again ; five hundred Abys- 
sinians were killed, and three times as many 
wounded. Not one of the English force was 
killed, and only nineteen men were wounded. 

Then Theodore tried to come to terms. He 
sent back all the prisoners, who at last found 
themselves safe and free under the protection of 
the English flag. But Theodore would not sur- 
render. Sir Robert Napier had therefore no al- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



71 



ternative but to order an assault on his strong- 
hold. Magdala was perched upon cliff's so high 
and steep that it was said a cat could not climb 
them except at two points — one north and one 
south — at each of which a narrow path led up to 
a strong gate-way. The attack was made by the 
northern path, and despite all the difficulties of 
the ascent, the attacking party reached the gate, 
forced it, and captured Magdala. Those who 
first entered found Theodore's dead body inside 
the gate. Defeated and despairing, he had died 
in the high Roman fashion — by his own hand. 

The rock - fortress of King Theodore was de- 
stroyed by the conqueror. Sir Robert Napier 
was unwilling to leave the place in its strength, 
because he had little doubt that if he did so it 
woidd be seized upon by a fierce Mohammedan 
tribe, the bitter enemies of the Abyssinian Chris- 
tians. He therefore dismantled and destroyed 
the place. "Nothing," to use his own language, 
" but blackened rock remains " of what was Mag- 
dala. The expedition returned to the coast al- 
most immediately. In less than a week after the 
capture of Magdala it was on its match to the sea. 
On June 21 the troop-ship Crocodile arrived at 
Plymouth with the first detachment of troops 
from Abyssinia. Nothing could have been more 
effectively planned, conducted, and timed than 
the whole expedition. It went and came to the 
precise moment appointed for every movement, 
like an express train. That was its great merit. 
Warlike difficulties it had none to encounter. 
No one can doubt that such difficulties, too, had 
they presented themselves, would have been en- 
countered with success. The struggle was against 
two tough enemies, climate and mountain ; and 
Sir Robert Napier won. He was made Baron 
Napier of Magdala, and received a pension. The 
thanks of both Houses of Parliament were voted 
to the army of Abyssinia and its commander. 

The widow of King Theodore died in the Eng- 
lish camp before the return of the expedition. 
Theodore's son, Alamayou, aged seven years, was 
taken charge of by Queen Victoria, and for a 
while educated in India. The boy was after- 
wards brought to England ; but he never reached 
maturity. All the care that could be taken of 
him here did not keep him from withering and 
dying under the influence of an uncongenial 
civilization. No attempt was made to interfere 
with the internal affairs of Abyssinia. Having 
destroyed their monarchy, the invaders left the 
Abyssinians to do as they would for the estab- 
lishment of another. Sir Robert Napier declared 
one of the chiefs a friend of the British, and this 
chief had some hopes of obtaining the sovereignty 
of the country. But his rank as a friend of the 
British did not prevent him from being defeated 
in a struggle with a rival, and this latter not long 
after succeeded in having himself crowned king 
under the title of John the Second. Another 
Prester John was set up in Abyssinia. 

* CHAPTER XXIH. 

IRISH QUESTIONS. 

"The Irish Peasant to his Mistress" is the 
name of one of Moore's finest songs. The Irish 
peasant tells his mistress of his undying fidelity 
to Iter. "Through grief and through danger" 
her smile has cheered his way. "The darker 
our fortunes the purer thy bright love burned;" 
it turned shame into glory, fear into zeal. Slave 
as he was, with her to guide him he felt free. 
She had a rival ; and the rival was honored, 
"while thou wert mocked and scorned." The 
rival wore a crown of gold ; the other's brows 
were girt with thorns. The rival wooed him to 
temples, while the loved one lay hid in caves. 
" Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas, 
are slaves'." "Yet,'' he declares, "cold in the 
earth at thy feet I would rather be than wed one 
I love not, or turn one thought from thee." 

The Irish peasant's mistress is the Catholic 
Church. The rival was the State Church set 
up by English authority. The Irish peasant re- 
mained through centuries of persecution devot- 
edly faithful to the Catholic Church. Nothing 
could win or wean him from it. The Irish pop- 
ulation of Ireland — there is meaning in the words 
— were made apparently by nature for the Cath- 



olic faith. Half the thoughts, half the life of the 
Irish peasant, belong to a world other than the 
material world around him. The supernatural 
becomes almost the natural for him. The streams, 
the valleys, the hills of his native country are 
peopled by mystic forms and melancholy legends, 
which are all but living things for him. Even 
the railway has not. banished from the land his 
familiar fancies and dreams. The "good peo- 
ple " still linger around the raths and glens. 
The banshee even yet laments, in dirge -like 
waitings, the death of the representative of each 
ancient house. The very superstitions of the 
Irish peasant take a devotional form. They 
are never degrading. His piety is not merely 
sincere; it is even practical. It sustains him 
against many hard trials, and enables him to 
bear, in cheerful patience, a lifelong trouble. 
He praises God for everything ; not as an act 
of mere devotional formality, but as by instinct, 
the praise naturally rising to his lips. Old men 
and women in Ireland who seem, to the observer, 
to have lived lives of nothing but privation and 
suffering, are heard to murmur with their latest 
breath the fervent declaration that the Lord was 
good to them always. Assuredly this genuine 
piety does not always prevent the wild, Celtic 
nature from breaking forth into fierce excesses. 
Stormy outbursts of passion, gusts of savage re- 
venge, too often sweep away the soul of the Irish 
peasant from the quiet moorings in which his 
natural piety and the teachings of his Church 
would hold it. But deep down in his nature is 
that faith in the other world and its visible con- 
nection and intercourse with this ; his reverence 
for the teaching which shows him a clear title to 
immortality. For this very reason, when the 
Irish peasant throws oft' altogether the guidance 
of religion, he is apt to rush into worse extrava- 
gances and excesses than most other men. He 
is not made to be a rationalist ; he is made to 
be a believer. 

The Irishman was bound by ties of inde- 
scribable strength and complication to his own 
Church. The State Church set up in Ireland 
was to him a symbol of oppression. There was 
not one rational word to be said on principle for 
the maintenance of such an institution. Every 
argument in favor of the State Church in Eng- 
land was an argument against the State Church 
in Ireland. The English Church, as an institu- 
tion, is defended on the ground that it repre- 
sents the religious convictions of the great ma- 
jority of the English people, and that it is qual- 
ified to take welcome charge of those who would 
otherwise be left without any religious care or 
teaching in England. The Catholics in Ireland 
were, to all other denominations together, as five 
to one; the State Church represented only a 
small proportion of a very small minority. In 
many places the Protestant clergyman preached 
to a dozen listeners ; in some places he thought 
himself lucky when he could get half a dozen. 
There were many places with a Protestant cler- 
gyman and Protestant church and absolutely 
no Protestant worshippers. There had not of 
late years been much positive hostility to the 
State Church among the Irish people. So long 
as the clergyman was content to live quietly 
and mind his own flock, where he had any to 
mind, his Catholic neighbors were not disposed 
to trouble themselves much about him. If he 
was a sensible man he was usually content to 
minister to his own people and meddle no far- 
ther with others. In the large towns he gener- 
ally had his considerable congregation and was 
busy enough. In some of the country places 
of the south and west he preached every Sunday 
to his little flock of five or six, while the congre- 
gation of the Catholic chapel a short distance 
off were covering great part of the hillside 
around the chapel door, because their numbers 
were many times too great to allow them to 
find room within the building itself. In days 
nearer to our own the miserable hovel had for 
the most part given place to a large and hand- 
some church ; in many places to a vast and 
stately cathedral. Nothing could be more re- 
markable than the manner in which the volun- 
tary offerings of the Irish Catholics covered the 
face of the country with churches dedicated to 



the uses of their faith. Often contributions 
came in liberal measure from Irishmen settled 
in far-off countries who were not likely ever 
again to see their native fields. Irish Catholic 
priests crossed the Atlantic, crossed even the Pa- 
cific, to ask for help to maintain their churches ; 
and there came from Quebec and Ontario, from 
New York, New Orleans, and Chicago, from Mel- 
bourne and Sydney, from Tasmania and New 
Zealand, the money which put up churches and 
spires on the Irish mountain -sides. The pro- 
portion between the Protestants and the Catho- 
lics began to tell more and more disadvan- 
tageous!}' for the State Church as years went 
on. Of late the influx of the Catholic working 
population into the northern province threatens 
to overthrow the supremacy of Protestanism in 
Protestantism's own stronghold. 

On March 16, 1868, a remarkable debate took 
place in the House of Commons. It, had for its 
subject the condition of Ireland, and it was in- 
troduced by a series of resolutions which Mr. 
John Francis Maguire, an Irish member, pro- 
posed. Mr. Maguire was a man of high char- 
acter and great ability and earnestness. He 
was a newspaper proprietor and an author ; he 
knew Ireland well, but he also knew England 
and the temper of the English people. He was 
ardent in his national sympathies; hut he was 
opposed to any movements of a seditious or a 
violent character. He had more than once 
risked his popularity among his countrymen by 
the resolute stand which he made against any 
agitation that tended towards rebellion. Mr. 
Maguire always held that the geographical sit- 
uation of England and Ireland rendered a sep- 
aration of the two countries impossible. But 
he accepted cordially the saying of Gwittan, 
that if the ocean forbade separation the sea de- 
nied union. He was in favor of a domestic 
legislature for Ireland, and he was convinced 
that such a measure would be found the means 
of establishing a true and genial union of feel- 
ing, a friendly partnership between the two coun- 
tries. Mr. Maguire was looked on with respect 
and confidence by all parties in England as well 
as in his own country. Even the Fenians, wdiose 
schemes he condemned, as he had condemned 
the Young Ireland movement of 184S, were will- 
ing to admit his honesty and his courage, for 
they found that there was no stauncher advocate 
in Parliament for a generous dealing with the 
Fenian prisoners. A speaker of remarkable 
power and earnestness, he was always listened 
to with attention in the House of Commons. 
It was well known that he bad declined tenders 
of office from both of the great English parties ; 
and it was known too that he had done this at 
a time when his personal interests made his re- 
fusal a considerable sacrifice. When, therefore, 
he invited the attention of the House of Com- 
mons to the condition of Ireland, the House 
knew that it was likely to have a fair and a 
trustworthy exposition of the subject. 

In the course of his speech Mr. Maguire laid 
great stress upon the evil effect wrought upon 
Ireland by the existence of the Irish Church. 
During the debate Lord Mayo, then Irish Sec- 
retary, made a speech in which he threw out 
some hint about a policy of equalizing all relig- 
ious denominations in Ireland without sacrificing 
the Irish Church. It has never since been known 
for certain whether he was giving a bint of a 
scheme actually in the mind of the Government ; 
whether he was speaking as one set up to feel 
his way into the opinion of the House of Com- 
mons and the public; or whether he was only 
following out some sudden and irresponsible 
speculations of his own. The words, however, 
produced a great effect on the House of Com- 
mons, It became evident at once that the ques- 
tion of the Irish Church was making itself at 
last a subject for the practical politician. Mr. 
Bright, in the course of the debate, strongly de- 
nounced the Irish Establishment, and enjoined 
the Government and all the great English parties 
to rise to the occasion, and resolve to deal in 
some serious way with the condition of Ireland. 
Difficulties of the gravest nature he ftdly ad- 
mitted were yet in the way, but be reminded 
the House, in tones of solemn and penetrating 



72 



A SHOBT HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. 



earnestness, that " to the upright there ariseth 
light in the darkness." But it was on the fourth 
night of the debate that the importance of the 
occasion became fully manifest. Then it was 
that Mr. Gladstone spoke, and declared that in 
his opinion the time had come when the Irish 
Church as a State institution must cease to exist. 
Then every man in the House knew that the end 
was near. Mr. Maguire withdrew his reso- 
lutions. The cause he had to serve was now in 
the hands of one who, though not surely more 
earnest for its success, had incomparably greater 
power to serve it. There was probably not a 
single Englishman capable of forming an opinion 
who did not know that from the moment when 
Mr. Gladstone made his declaration the fall of 
the Irish State Church had become merely a 
question of time. Men only waited to see how 
Mr. Gladstone would proceed to procure its fall. 

Public expectation was not long kept in sus- 
pense. A few days after the debate on Mr. Ma- 
guire's motion, Mr. Gladstone gave notice of 
three resolutions on the subject of the Irish State 
Church. The first declared that in the opinion 
of the House of Commons it was necessary that 
the Established Church of Ireland should cease 
to exist as an Establishment, due regard being 
had to all personal interests and to all individual 
rights of property. The second resolution pro- 
nounced it expedient to prevent the creation of 
new personal interests by the exercise of any pub- 
lic patronage ; and the third asked for an ad- 
dress to the Queen, praying that her Majesty 
would place at the disposal of Parliament her 
interest in the temporalities of the Irish Church. 
The object of these resolutions was simply to 
prepare for the actual disestablishment of the 
Church, by providing that no further appoint- 
ments should be made, and that the action of 
patronage should be stayed until Parliament 
should decide the fate of the whole institution. 
On March 30, 1868, Mr. Gladstone proposed his 
resolutions. Not many persons could have had 
much doubt as to the result of the debate. But 
if there were any such, their doubts must have 
begun to vanish when they read the notice of 
amendment to the resolutions which was given 
by Lord Stanley. The amendment proclaimed 
even more surely than the resolutions the im- 
pending fall of the Irish Church. Lord Stanley 
must have been supposed to speak in the name 
of the Government and the Conservative party ; 
and his amendment merely declared that the 
House, while admitting that considerable modi- 
fications in the temporalities of the Church in 
Ireland might appear to be expedient, was of 
opinion "that any proposition tending to the 
disestablishment or disendowment of that Church 
ought to be reserved for the decision of the new 
Parliament." Lord Stanley's amendment asked 
only for delay. It did not plead that to-morrow 
would be sudden ; it only asked that the stroke 
of doom should not be allowed to fall on the 
Irish Church to-day. 

The debate was one of great power and inter- 
est. Some of the speakers were heard at their 
Tery best. Mr. Bright made a speech which 
was well worthy of the occasion and the orator. 
Mr. Gathorne Hardy was in his very element. 
He flung aside all consideration of amendment, 
compromise, or delay, and went in for a vehe- 
ment defence of the Irish Church. Mr. Hardy 
was not a debater of keen logical power, nor an 
orator of genuine inspiration, but he always could 
rattle a defiant drum with excellent effect. He 
beat the war-drum this time with tremendous 
energy. On the other hand, Mr. Lowe threw 
an intensity of bitterness remarkable even for 
him into the unsparing logic with which he as- 
sailed the Irish Church. That Church, he said, 
was "like an exotic brought from a far country, 
tended with infinite pains and useless trouble. 
It is kept alive with the greatest difficulty and 
at great expense in an ungenial climate and an 
ungrateful soil. The curse of barrenness is upon 
it. It has no leaves, puts forth no blossom, and 
yields no fruit. Cut it down ; why cumbereth 
it the ground?" Not the least remarkable 
speech of the debate was that made by Lord 
Cranborne, who denounced the Government of 
which he was not long since a member with an 



energy of hatred almost like ferocity. He ac- 
cused his late colleagues of having in every pos- 
sible way betrayed the cause of Conservatism, 
and he assailed Mr. Disraeli personally in a 
manner which made older members think of the 
days when Mr. Disraeli was denouncing Sir 
Robert Peel. No eloquence and no invective, 
however, could stay the movement begun by Mr. 
Gladstone. When the division was called there 
were 270 votes for the amendment and 331 
against it. The doom of the Irish Church was 
pronounced by a majority of 61. An interval 
was afforded for agitation on both sides. The 
House of Commons had only decided against 
Lord Stanley's amendment. Mr. Gladstone's 
resolutions had yet to be discussed. Lord Rus- 
sell presided at a great meeting held in St. 
James's Hall for the purpose of expressing pub- 
lic sympathy with the movement to disestablish 
the Irish Church. Many meetings were held by 
those on the other side of the question as well ; 
but it was obvious to every one that there was 
no great force in the attempt at a defence of the 
Irish Church. That institution had, in truth, a 
position which only became less and less defensi- 
ble the more it was studied. Every example 
and argument drawn from the history of the 
Church of England was but another condemna- 
tion of the Church of Ireland. The more strong- 
ly an Englishman was inclined to support his 
own Church, the more anxious he ought to have 
been to repudiate the claim of the Irish Church 
to a similar position. 

Mr. Gladstone's first resolution came to a di- 
vision about a month after the defeat of Lord 
Stanley's amendment. It was carried by a ma- 
jority somewhat larger than that which had 
rejected the amendment — 330 votes were given 
for the resolution ; 265 against it. The majority 
for the resolution was therefore 65. Mr. Disraeli 
quietly observed that the Government must take 
some decisive step in consequence of that vote ; 
and a few days afterwards it was announced that 
as soon as the necessary business could be got 
through, Parliament would be dissolved and an 
appeal made to the country. On the last day of 
July the dissolution took place, and the elections 
came on in November. Not for many years had 
there been so important a general election. The 
keenest anxiety prevailed as to its results. The 
new constituencies created by the Reform Bill 
were to give their votes for the first time. The 
question at issue was not merely the existence 
of the Irish State Church. It was a general 
struggle of advanced Liberalism against Tory- 
ism. No one could doubt that Mr. Gladstone, 
if he came into power, would enter on a policy 
of more decided Liberalism than had ever been 
put into action since the days of the Reform Bill 
of Lord Grey and Lord John Russell. The re- 
sult of the elections was on the whole what 
might have been expected. The Liberals had 
a great majority. But there were many curious 
and striking instances of the growing strength 
of Conservatism in certain parts of the country. 
Lancashire, once a very stronghold of Liberal- 
ism, returned only Tories for its county divisions, 
and even in most eases elected Tories to repre- 
sent its boroughs. Eight Conservatives came in 
for the county of Lancaster, and among those 
whom their election displaced were no less emi- 
nent persons than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hart- 
ington. Mr. Gladstone was defeated in South- 
west Lancashire, but the result of the contest had 
been generally anticipated, and therefore some 
of his supporters put him up for Greenwich also, 
and he was elected there. He had been passing 
step by step from less popular to more popular 
constituencies. Erom the University of Oxford 
he had passed to the Lancashire division, and 
now from the Lancashire constituency he went 
on to a place where the Liberal portion of the 
electors were inclined, for the most part, to be 
not merely Radical but democratic. 

The contest in North Lancashire was made 
more interesting than it would otherwise have 
been by the fact that it was not alone a struggle 
between opposing principles and parties, but also 
between two great rival houses. Lord Harting- 
ton represented the great Cavendish family. Mr. 
Frederick Stanley was the younger son of Lord 



Derby. Lord Harrington was defeated by a 
large majority, and was left out of Parliament 
for a few months. He was afterwards elected 
for the Radnor Boroughs. Mr. Mill was defeat- 
ed at Westminster. His defeat was brought 
about by a combination of causes. He had been 
elected in a moment of sudden enthusiasm, and 
the enthusiasm had now had time to cool away. 
He had given some offence in various quarters by 
a too great independence of action and of expres- 
sion. On many questions of deep interest he had 
shown that he was entirely out of harmony with 
the views of the vast majority of his constituents, 
whatever their religious denomination might he. 
He had done some things which people called 
eccentric, and an English popular constituency 
does not love eccentricity. His opponent, Mr. 
W. H. Smith, was very popular in Westminster, 
and had been quietly canvassing it for years. 
Some of the Westminster electors had probably 
grown tired of being represented by one who was 
called a philosopher. Some other prominent pub- 
lic men lost their seats. Mr. Roebuck was de- 
feated in Sheffield. His defeat was partly due to 
the strong stand he had made against the trades- 
unions ; but still more to the bitterness of the 
hostility he had shown to the Northern States 
during the American Civil War. Mr. Milner 
Gibson and Mr. Bernal Osborne were also un- 
seated. The latter got into Parliament again. 
The former disappeared from public life. He 
had done good service at one time as an ally of 
Cobden and Bright. Mr. Lowe was elected the 
first representative of the University of London, 
on which the Conservative Reform Bill had con- 
ferred a seat. Mr. Disraeli afterwards humor- 
ously claimed the credit of having enabled Mr. 
Lowe to carry on his public career by providing 
for him the only constituency in England which 
would have accepted him as its representative. 
This was the first general election with house- 
hold suffrage in boroughs and a lowered franchise 
in counties. Yet curiously enough the extreme 
democratic candidates, and those who were called 
the working-men's candidates, were in every in- 
stance rejected. The new Parliament was to all 
appearance less marked in its Liberalism than 
that which had gone before it. But so far as 
mere numbers went the Liberal party was much 
stronger than it had been. In the new House of 
Commons it could count upon a majority of 
about 120, whereas in the late Parliament it had 
but 60. Mr. Gladstone, it was clear, would now 
have everything in his own hands, and the coun- 
try might look for a career of energetic reform. 

While the debates on Mr. Gladstone's resolu- 
tions were still going on, there came to England 
the news that Lord Brougham was dead. He 
had died at Cannes in his ninetieth year. His 
death was a quiet passing away from a world that 
had well-nigh forgotten him. Seldom has a po- 
litical career been so strangely cut short as that 
of Lord Brougham. Prom the time when the 
Whig Administration was formed without him, 
he seemed to have no particular business in pub- 
lic life. He never had from that hour the slight- 
est influence on any political party or any politi- 
cal movement. His restless figure was seen mov- 
ing about the House of Lords like that of a man 
who felt himself out of place there, and was there- 
fore out of humor with himself and his company. 
He often took part in debate, and for many years 
he continued to show all the fire and energy of 
his earlier days. But of late he had almost en- 
tirely dropped out of politics. Happily for him 
the Social Science Association was formed, and 
he acted for a long time as its principal guide, 
philosopher, and friend. He made speeches at 
its meetings, presided at many of its banquets, 
and sometimes showed that he could still com- 
mand the resources of a massive eloquence. The 
men of the younger generation looked at him 
with interest and wonder ; they found it hard to 
realize the fact that only a few years before he 
was one of the most conspicuous and energetic 
figures in political agitation. Now he seemed 
oddly like some dethroned king who occupies his 
leisure in botanical studies ; some once famous 
commander, long out of harness, who amuses 
himself with learning the flute. There were per- 
haps some who forgot Brougham the great re- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



73 



former altogether, and only thought of Brough- 
am the patron and orator of the Social Science 
Association. He passed his time between Cannes, 
which he may be saiil to have discovered, and 
London. At one time he had had the idea of 
actually becoming a citizen of France, being of 
opinion that it. would set a good example for the 
brotherhood of peoples if he were to show how a 
man could be a French and an English citizen at 
the same moment. He had outlived nearly all 
his early friends and foes. Melbourne, Grey, 
Durham, Campbell, Lyndliurst had passed away. 
The death of Lyndliurst bad been a great grief to 
him. It is said that in his failing, later years he 
often directed his coachman to drive him to Lord 
Lyndhurst's house, as if bis old friend and gos- 
sip were still among the living. At last Brough- 
am began to give unmistakable signs of vanish- 
ing intelligence. His appearances in public were 
mournful exhibitions. He sometimes sat at a 
dinner-party and talked loudly to himself of some- 
thing which had no concern with the time, the 
place, or the company. His death created but a 
mere momentary thrill of emotion in England. 
He bad made bitter enemies and cherished strong 
hatreds in his active years ; and, like all men who 
have strong hatreds, he had warm affections too. 
But the close friends and the bitter enemies were 
gone alike ; and the agitation about the Irish 
Church was scarcely interrupted for a moment 
by the news of his death. 

The Parliament which was called together in 
the close of 1868 was known to have before it 
the great task of endeavoring to govern Ireland 
on the principle enunciated by Fox seventy years 
before — that is, according to Irish ideas. Mr. 
Gladstone bad proclaimed this purpose himself. 
He had made it known that he would endeavor 
to deal with Ireland's three great difficulties — ■ 
the State Church, the tenure of land, and the 
system of university education. Men's minds 
were wrought up to the enterprise. The country 
was in a temper to try heroic remedies. The 
public were tired of government which merely 
tinkered at legislation, putting in a little patch 
here, and stopping up for the moment a little 
hole there. Perhaps, therefore, there was a cer- 
tain disappointment as the general character of 
the new Parliament began to be understood. 
The eminent men on whom all eyes turned in 
the old Parliament were to be seen of all eyes in 
the new. It was clear that Mr. Gladstone would 
be master of the situation. But there did not 
seem anything particularly hero-like in the gen- 
eral aspect of the new House of Commons. Its 
composition was very much the same as that of 
the old. Vast sums of money had been spent 
upon the elections. Rich men were, as before, 
in immense preponderance. Elder and younger 
sons of great families were as many as ever. 
The English constituencies under the new suf- 
frage were evidently no whit less fond of lords, 
no whit less devoted to wealth, than they had 
been under the old. Not a single man of ex- 
treme democratic opinions had a seat in the new 
House of Commons. Where any marked change 
had been made it showed itself in removing such 
men from Parliament rather than in returning 
them to it. 

Mr. Disraeli did not meet the new Parliament 
as Prime-minister. He decided very properly 
that it would be a mere waste of public time to 
wait for the formal vote of the House of Com- 
mons, which would inevitably command him to 
surrender. He at once resigned his office, and 
Mr. Gladstone was immediately sent for by the 
Queen, and invited to form an Administration. 
Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, was only begin- 
ning his career. He was nearly sixty years of 
age, but there were scarcely any evidences of ad- 
vancing years to be seen on his face, and he had 
all the fire of proud, indomitable youth in his 
voice and his manner. He had come into office 
at the head of a powerful party. There was 
hardly anything he could not do with such a fol- 
lowing and with such personal energy. The 
Government he formed was one of remarkable 
strength. The one name upon its list, after that 
of the Prime -minister himself, which engaged 
the interest of the public, was that of Mr. Bright. 
Mr. Bright had not sought office, it had come to 



him. It was impossible that a Liberal ministry 
could now be formed without Mr. Bright's name 
appearing in it. Mr. Gladstone at first offered 
him the office of Secretary of State for India. 
The state of Mr. Bright's health would not allow 
him to undertake the very laborious duties of 
such a place, and probably in any case it would 
have been repugnant to his feelings to accept a 
position which might have called on him to give 
orders for the undertaking of a war. Every man 
in a Cabinet is of course responsible for all its 
acts ; but there is still an evident difference, so 
far as personal feeling is concerned, between ac- 
quiescing in some inevitable policy of war and 
actually directing that war shall be made. The 
position of President of the Board of Trade was 
that which had been offered by Lord Palmerston 
to Mr. Bright's- old friend, Richard Cohden, and 
it seemed in every way well suited to Mr. Bright 
himself. Many men felt a doubt as to the possi- 
bility of Mr. Bright's subduing his personal in- 
dependence and his outspoken ways to the dis- 
cipline and reticence of a Cabinet, and Mr. 
Bright himself appeared to be a little afraid that 
he should be understood as thoroughly approving 
of every measure in which he might, by official 
order, feel compelled to acquiesce. He cautioned 
his Birmingham constituents not to believe that 
he had changed any of his opinions until bis own 
voice publicly proclaimed the change, and he 
made what might almost be called an appeal to 
them to remember that he was now one man 
serving in a band of men; no longer responsible 
only for himself, no longer independent of the 
acts of others. 

Lord Granville was Secretary for the Colonies 
under the new Administration ; Lord Clarendon 
Foreign Secretary. The Duke of Argyll was 
intrusted with the Indian Office. Mr. Cardwell, 
to all appearance one of the coldest and least 
warlike of men, was made Secretary for War, 
and had in his charge one of the greatest reforms 
of the administration. Lord Hartington, Lord 
Dufferin, Mr. Childers, and Mr. Bruce had places 
assigned to them. Mr. Layard became First 
Commissioner of Public Works. Mr. W. E. 
Forster had the office of Vice-President of the 
Council, and came in for work hardly less im- 
portant than that of the Prime-minister himself. 
The Lord Chancellor was Lord Hatherley, for- 
merly Sir William Page Wood. Many years 
before, when Lord Hatherley was only known 
as a rising man among advanced Liberals, and 
when Mr. Bright was still regarded by all true 
Conservatives as a Radical demagogue, Mr. 
Bright and Mr. Wood were talking of the polit- 
ical possibilities of the future. Mr. Bright jest- 
ingly expressed a hope that whenever he came 
to be member of a Cabinet, Mr. Wood might be 
the Lord Chancellor. Nothing could then have 
seemed less likely to come to pass. As Lord 
Hatherley and Mr. Bright met on their way to 
Windsor to wait on the Queen, Mr. Bright re- 
minded his colleague of the jest that had appar- 
ently been prophetic. 

Mr. Gladstone went to work at once with his 
Irish policy. On March 1, 1S69, the Prime- 
minister introduced his measure for the disestab- 
lishment and partial disendowment of the Irish 
State Church. The proposals of the Govern- 
ment were, that the Irish Church should almost 
at once cease to exist as a State Establishment, 
and should pass into the condition of a free 
Episcopal Church. As a matter of course the 
Irish bishops were to lose their seats in the House 
of Lords. A synodal, or governing body, was 
to be elected from the clergy and laity of the 
Church, and was to be recognized by the Govern- 
ment and duly incorporated. The union be- 
tween the Churches of England and Ireland was 
to be dissolved, and the Irish Ecclesiastical 
Courts were to be abolished. There were vari- 
ous and complicated arrangements for the pro- 
tection of the life interests of those already hold- 
ing positions in the Irish Church, and for the 
appropriation of the fund which would return to 
the possession of the State when all these inter- 
ests had been fairly considered and dealt with. 
It must be owned that the Government dealt 
with vested interests in no niggard spirit. If 
they erred at all they erred on the side of too 



much generosity. But they had arrayed against 
them adversaries so strong that they probably- 
felt it absolutely necessary to buy off some of the 
opposition by a liberal compensation to all those 
who were to be deprived of their dignity as 
clergymen of a State Church. When, however, 
all had been paid off who could establish any 
claim, and some, perhaps, who had in strict fair- 
ness no claim whatever, there remained a large 
fund at the disposal of the Government. This 
they resolved to set apart for the relief of un- 
avoidable suffering in Ireland. 

The sum to be disposed of was very consider- 
able. The gross value of the Irish Church prop- 
erty was estimated at sixteen millions. From 
this sum would have to be deducted nearly five 
millions for the vested interests of incumbents; 
one million seven hundred thousand for compen- 
sations to curates and lay compensations; half 
a million for private endowments ; for the May- 
nooth Grant and the Regium Donum about a 
million and a quarter. There would be left 
nearly nine millions for any beneficent purpose 
on which the Government and the country could 
make up their minds. The Maynooth Grant 
and the Regium Donum were to go with the 
Irish Church, and the same principle of com- 
pensation was to be applied to those who were 
to be deprived of them. The Regium Donum 
was an allowance from the Sovereign for the 
maintenance of Presbyterian ministers in Ire- 
land. It was begun by Charles II. and let drop 
by James, but was restored by William III. 
William felt grateful for the support given him 
by the Presbyterians in Ireland during his con- 
test with James, and indeed had little prefer- 
ence for one form of the Protestant faith over 
another. William, in the first instance, fixed 
the grant as a charge upon the customs of Bel- 
fast. The Maynooth Grant has been already 
described in these pages. Both these grants, 
each a very small thing in itself, now came to 
an end, and the principle of equality among the 
religious denominations of Ireland was to be 
established. 

The bill was stoutly resisted by Mr. Disraeli and 
his party. They resisted it as a whole, and they 
also fought it in detail. They proposed amend- 
ment after amendment in committee, and did all 
they could to stay its progress as well as to alter 
some of its arrangements. But there did not 
seem to be much of genuine earnestness in the 
speeches made by Mr. Disraeli. The fact that 
resistance was evidently hopeless had no doubt 
some effect upon the style of his eloquence. His 
speeches were amusing rather than impressive. 
They were full of good points; they sparkled 
with happy illustrations and allusions, odd con- 
ceits and bewildering paradoxes. But the orator 
had evidently no faith in the cause he advocated ; 
no faith, that is to say, in the possibility of its 
success. He must have seen too clearly that 
the Church as a State establishment in Ireland 
was doomed, and he had not that intensity of 
interest in its maintenance which would hare 
made him fight the course, as he had fought 
many a course before, with all the passionate 
eloquence of desperation. One of his lieutenants, 
Mr. Gathorne Hardy, was more effective as a 
champion of the sinking Irish Church than Mr. 
Disraeli proved himself to be. Mr. Hardy was 
a man so constituted as to be only capable of 
seeing one side of a question at a time. He was 
filled with the conviction that the Government 
were attempting an act of spoliation and sacri- 
lege, and he stormed against the meditated crime 
with a genuine energy which occasionally seemed 
to supply him with something like eloquence. 
A peculiar interest attached to the part taken in 
the debate by Sir Roundell Palmer. It was nat- 
ural that Sir Roundell Palmer should be with 
Mr. Gladstone. Every one expected in the first 
instance that he would have held high office in 
the new Administration. He was one of the 
very foremost lawyers and the best Parliamen- 
tary debaters of the day, and the wool-sack 
seemed to be his fitting place. But Sir Roundell 
Palmer could not conscientiously agree to the 
disestablishment of the Irish State Church. He 
was willing to consent to very extensive altera- 
tions and reductions in the Establishment, but 



74 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



he could not go with Mr. Gladstone all the way 
to the abolition of the Church; and he therefore 
remained outside the Ministry, and opposed the 
bill. If the fate of the Irish Church could have 
been averted or even postponed by impassioned 
eloquence something might have been done to 
stay the stroke of doom. But the fate of the 
institution was sealed at the moment that Mr. 
Gladstone returned from the general elections 
in command of a Liberal majority. The House 
of Lords were prudent enough not to set them- 
selves against the clear declaration of national 
opinion. Many amendments were introduced 
and discussed ; and some of these led to a con- 
troversy between the two Houses of Parliament ; 
but the controversy ended in compromise. On 
July 26, 1869, the measure for the disestablish- 
ment of the Irish Church received the royal 
assent. 

Lord Derby did not long survive the passing 
of the measure which he had opposed with such 
fervor and so much pathetic dignity. He died 
before the Irish State Church had ceased to live. 
Doomed as it was, it outlasted its eloquent cham- 
pion. In the interval between the passing and the 
practical operation of Mr. Gladstone's bill, on Oc- 
tober 23, Lord Derby died at Knowsley, the resi- 
dence of the Stanleys in Lancashire. His death 
made no great gap in English politics. He 
had for some time ceased to assert any really 
influential place in public affairs. His career 
had been eminent and distinguished ; but its 
day had long been done. Lord Derby never 
was a statesman ; he was not even a great leader 
of a party; but he was a splendid figure-head 
for Conservatism in or out of power. He was, 
on the whole, a superb specimen of the English 
political nobleman. Proud of soul, but sweet in 
temper and genial in manner ; dignified as men 
are who feel instinctively that dignity pertains to 
them, and therefore never think of how to assert 
or to maintain it, he was eminently fitted by tem- 
perament, by nature, and by fortune for the 
place it was given him to hold. His parlia- 
mentary oratory has already become a tradition. 
It served its purpose admirably for the time ; it 
showed, as Macaulay said, that Lord Derby pos- 
sessed the very instinct of parliamentary debate. 
It was not weighted with the thought which could 
have secured it a permanent place in political lit- 
erature, nor had it the imagination which would 
have lifted it into an atmosphere above the level 
of Hansard. In Lord Derby's own day the 
unanimous opinion of both Houses of Parlia- 
ment would have given him a place among the 
Tery foremost of parliamentary orators. Many 
competent judges went so far as to set him dis- 
tinctly above all living rivals. Time has not 
ratified this judgment. It is impossible that the 
influence of an orator could have faded so soon 
if he had really been entitled to the praise which 
many of his contemporaries would freely have 
rendered to Lord Derby. The charm of his 
voice and style, his buoyant readiness, his rush- 
ing fluency, his rich profusion of words, his hap- 
py knack of illustration, allusion, and retort — 
all these helped to make men believe him a much 
greater orator than he really was. Something, 
too, was due to the influence of his position. It 
seemed a sort of condescension on the part of a 
great noble that he should consent to be an elo- 
quent debater also, and to contend in parliamen- 
tary sword-play against professional champions 
like Peel and O'Connell and Brougham. It 
must count for something in Lord Derby's fame 
that, while far inferior to any of these men in 
political knowledge and in mental capacity, he 
could compare as an orator with each in turn, 
and — were it but for his own day, were it but 
while the magic of his presence and his voice 
was yet a living influence — could be held by so 
many to have borne without disadvantage the 
test of comparison. 

When the Irish Church had been disposed of, 
Mr. Gladstone at once directed his energies to 
the Irish land system. Ireland is essentially an 
agricultural country. It has few manufactures, 
not many large towns. Dublin, Belfast, Cork, 
Limerick, Waterford — these are the only towns 
that could be called large; below these we come 
to places that in most other countries would be 



spoken of as villages or hamlets. The majority 
of the population of Ireland live on the land and 
by the land. The condition of most of the Irish 
tenantry may be painted effectively in a single 
touch when it is said that they were tenants-at- 
will. That fact would of itself be almost enough 
to account for the poverty and the misery of the 
agricultural classes in Ireland. But there were 
other conditions, too, which tended the same way. 
The land of Ireland was divided among a com- 
paratively small number of landlords, and the 
landlords were, as a rule, strangers, the repre- 
sentatives of a title acquired by conquest. Many 
of them were habitual absentees, who would as 
soon have thought of living in Ashantee as in 
Munster or Connaught. The Irish agricultural 
population held the land which was their only 
means of living at the mercy of the landlord or his 
agent. They had no interest in being industri- 
ous and improving their land. If they improved 
the patch of soil they worked on, their rent was 
almost certain to be raised, or they were turned 
out of the land without receiving a farthing of 
compensation for their improvements. Of course 
there were many excellent landlords, humane 
and kindly men — men, too, who saw the wisdom 
of being humane and kind. But in the majority 
of cases the landlords and the agents held firmly 
by what seemed to them the right of property — 
the right to get as high a price for a piece of 
land as it would fetch in open competition. The 
demand for land was so great, the need of land 
was so vital, that men would offer any price for 
it. When the tenant had got hold of his piece 
of land, he had no idea of cultivating it to the 
best of his strength and opportunities. Why 
should he? The moment his holding began to 
show a better appearance, that moment he might 
look to having his rent raised, or to being turned 
out in favor of some competitor who offered 
higher terms for occupation. Why should he 
improve? Whenever he was turned out of the 
land he would have to leave his improvements 
for the benefit of the landlord or the new-comer. 
He was, therefore, content to scratch the soil 
instead of really cultivating it. He extracted 
all he could from it in his short day. He lived 
from band to mouth, from hour to hour. 

In one province in Ireland, indeed, a better 
condition of things existed. Over the greater 
part of Ulster the tenant-right system prevailed. 
This system was a custom merely, but it had 
gradually come to acquire something like the 
force of law. The principle of tenant-right was 
that a man should be allowed to remain in un- 
disturbed possession of his holding as long as he 
paid his rent ; that he should be entitled, on giv- 
ing up the land, to compensation for unexhausted 
improvements, and that he should be at liberty 
to sell the " good-will " of his farm for what it 
would fetch in the market. The tenant was 
free to do what a man who has a long lease of 
any holding may do ; he might sell to any bidder 
of whom his landlord approved the right to enter 
on the occupancy of the place. Wherever this 
tenant-right principle prevailed there was indus- 
try, there was prosperity ; where it did not prevail 
was the domain of poverty, idleness, discontent, 
and crime. The one demand of the Irish agri- 
cultural population everywhere was for some 
form of fixity of tenure. The demand was neg- 
lected oy refused by generations of English states- 
men, chiefly because no statesman would take 
the trouble to distinguish between words and 
things; between shadowy, pedantic theories and 
clear, substantial facts. "Tenant-right," said 
Lord Palmerston, amid the cheers of an assembly 
mainly composed of landlords, "is landlord's 
wrong." Lord Palmerston forgot that the land- 
lord, like every one else in the commonwealth, 
holds even his dearest rights of property subject 
to the condition that his assertion of them is not 
inconsistent with the general weal. The land- 
lord holds his land as the ship-owner holds his 
ship and the railway company its lines of rail; 
subject to the right of the State to see that the 
duties of possession are properly fulfilled, and 
that the ownership is not allowed to become a 
public danger and a nuisance. Land is, from its 
very nature, from the fact that it cannot be in- 
creased in extent, and that the possession by one 



man is the exclusion of another, the form of 
property over which the State would most natu- 
rally be expected to reserve a right of ultimate 
control. Yet English statesmen for generations 
complacently asserted the impossibility of any 
legislative interference with the right of the land- 
lord, as if legislation had not again and again 
interfered with the right of the factory owner, 
the owner of mines, the possessor of railway 
shares, the shopkeeper ; the right of the master 
over his apprentice, the mistress in the hire of 
her maid-of-all-work. 

If ever there was a creature of law, and of au- 
thority acting in the place of law, it was the land- 
lordism of Ireland. It was imposed upon the 
country and the people. It could not plead in 
support of any of its alleged rights even that pre- 
scriptive title which grows up with the growth 
of an institution that has held its place during all 
the ages to which tradition or memory goes back. 
The landlordism of Ireland was, compared with 
most European institutions, a thing of the day 
before yesterday. It was the creation of con- 
quest, the impost of confiscation. It could plead 
no title whatever to maintain an unlimited right 
of action in opposition to the welfare of the peo- 
ple on whom it was forced. At least it could 
claim no such title when once the time had pass- 
ed away which insisted that the right of conquest 
superseded all other human rights, that the ten- 
ant, like the slave, had no rights which his mas- 
ter was bound to respect, and that the common 
weal meant simply the interests and the privileges 
of the ruling class. The moment the title of the 
Irish land system came to be fairly examined, it 
was seen to be full of flaws. It was dependent 
on conditions that had never been fulfilled. It 
had not even made the landlord class prosperous. 
It had not even succeeded, as no doubt some of 
its founders intended that it should succeed, in 
colonizing the island with English and Scotch set- 
tlers. For generations the land-tenure system 
of Ireland had been the subject of parliamen- 
tary debate aud parliamentary inquiry. Noth- 
ing came of all this. The supposed right of 
the landlord stopped the way. The one simple 
demand of the occasion was, as we have shown, 
security of tenure, and it was an article of faith 
with English statesmanship until Mr. Gladstone's 
time that security for the tenant was confiscation 
for the landlord. 

Mr. Gladstone came into power full of genuine 
reforming energy and without the slightest faith 
in the economic wisdom of our ancestors. In a 
speech delivered by him, during his electioneering 
campaign in Lancashire, he had declared that 
the Irish upas-tree had three great branches — the 
State Church, the Land-tenure System, and the 
System of Education — and that he meant to hew 
them all down if he could. On February 15, 
1870, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land 
Bill into the House of Commons. Mr. Glad- 
stone's measure overthrew once for all the doc- 
trine of the landlord's absolute and unlimited 
right. It recognized a certain property or part- 
nership of the tenant in the land which he tilled. 
Mr. Gladstone took the Ulster tenant-right as he 
found it, and made it a legal institution. In 
places where the Ulster practice, or something 
analogous to it, did not exist, he threw upon the 
landlord the burden of proof as regarded the 
right of eviction. The tenant disturbed in the 
possession of his land could claim compensation 
for improvements, and the bill reversed the exist- 
ing assumption of the law by presuming all im- 
provements to be the property of the tenant, and 
leaving it to the landlord, if he could, to prove 
the contrary. The bill established a special judi- 
cial machinery for carrying out its provisions. 
It allowed the tribunals thus instituted to take 
into consideration not merely the strict legal con- 
ditions of each case, but also any circumstances 
that might affect the claim of the tenant as a 
matter of equity. Mr. Gladstone's great object 
was to bring about a state of things by virtue of 
which a tenant should not be dispossessed of his 
holding so long as he continued to pay his rent, 
and should in any case be entitled to full com- 
pensation for any substantial improvements which 
his energy or his capital might have effected. 
Mr. Gladstone, however, allowed landlords, under 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



75 



certain conditions, to contract themselves out of 
the provisions of the bill, and these conditions 
were so largely availed of in some parts of Ire- 
land that there were more evictions after the hill 
had become law than before it had yet been 
thought of. On this ground the measure was 
actually opposed by some of the popular repre- 
sentatives of Ireland. The general opinion, how- 
ever, then and since was, that the bill was of in- 
estimable value to Ireland in the mere fact that 
it completely upset the fundamental principles on 
which legislation had always previously dealt with 
Irish land tenure. It put an end to the reign of 
the landlord's absolute power; it reduced the 
landlord to the level of every other proprietor, of 
every other man in the country who had anything 
to sell or hire. It decided once for all against 
Lord Palmerston's famous dogma, and declared 
that tenant-right was not landlord's wrong. There- 
fore the new legislation might in one sense have 
well been called revolutionary. 

The bill passed without substantial alteration. 
On August 1, 1870, the bill received the Royal 
assent. The second branch of the upas-tree had 
been hewn down ; but the woodman's axe had 
yet to be laid to a branch of a tougher fibre, well 
calculated to turn the edge of even the best weap- 
on, and to jar the strongest arm that wielded it. 
Mr. Gladstone had dealt with Church and land; 
he had yet to deal with university education. He 
had gone with Irish ideas thus far. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

' ' REFORM ATION IN A FLOOD." 

On June 10, 1870, men's minds were sudden- 
ly turned away from thought of political contro- 
versy to a country house near the Gad's Hill of 
Shakspeare, on the road to Rochester, where the 
most popular author of his day was lying dead. 
On the evening of June 8 Mr. Dickens became 
suddenly seized with paralysis. He fell into an 
unconscious state.and continued so until his death, 
the evening after. The news was sent over the 
country on the 10th, and brought a pang as of 
personal sorrow into almost every home. Dick- 
ens was not of an age to die ; he had scarcely 
passed his prime. Born early in February, 1S12, 
he had not gone far into his fifty-ninth year. No 
author of our time came near him in popularity ; 
perhaps no English author ever was so popular 
during his own life. To an immense number of 
men and women in these countries Dickens 
stood for literature ; to not a few his cheery teach- 
ing was sufficient as philosophy and even as re- 
ligion. Soon after his death, as might have been 
expected, a certain reaction took place, and for a 
while it became the fashion to smile quietly at 
Dickens's teaching and his influence. That mood 
too will have its day and will pass. It may be 
safely predicted that Dickens will be found to 
have made a firm place in English literature, al- 
though that place will probably not be so high as 
bis admirers would once have claimed for him. 
Londoners were familiar with Dickens's personal 
appearance as well as with his writings, and cer- 
tain London streets did not seem quite the same 
when his striking face and energetic movements 
could be seen there no more. It is likely that 
Dickens overworked his exuberant vital energy, 
his superb resources of physical health and ani- 
mal spirits. In work and play, in writing and in j 
exercising, he was unsparing of his powers. Men 
who were early companions of his, and who had 
not half his vital power, outlived him many years. 
He was buried in Westminister Abbey, although 
his own desire was to be laid quietly in Roches- 
ter church-yard. It was held that the national 
cemetery claimed him. We cannot help think- 
ing it a pity the claim was made. Most of the 
admirers of Dickens would have been better 
pleased to think that he lay beneath the green 
turf of the ancient church-yard, in venerable and 
storied Rochester, amid the scenes that he loved 
and taught so many others to love. 

Nothing in modern English history is like the 
rush of the extraordinary years of reforming ener- 
gy on which the new Administration had now 
entered. Mr. Gladstone's Government had to 
grapple with five or six great questions of reform, 
any one of which might have seemed enough to 



| engage the whole attention of an ordinary Ad- 
ministration. The new Prime-minister had 
pledged himself to abolish the State Church in 
Ireland and to reform the Irish Land-tenure sys- 
tem. He had made up his mind to put an end 
to the purchase of commissions in the army. Re- 
cent events and experiences had convinced him 
that it was necessary to introduce the system of 
voting by ballot. He accepted for his Govern- 
ment the responsibility of originating a complete 
scheme of National Education. Meanwhile, 
there were many questions of the highest impor- 
tance in foreign policy waiting for solution. It 
required no common energy and strength of char- 
acter to keep closely to the work of domestic re- 
form, amid such exciting discussions in foreign 
policy all the while, and with the war-trumpet 
ringing for a long time in the ears of England. 

Mr. Forster's Education Bill may be said to 
have been run side by side with the Irish Land 
Bill. The manner in which England had neg- 
lected the education of her poor children had long 
been a reproach to her civilization. She was be- 
hind every other great country in the world ; she 
was behind many countries that in nowise pro- 
fessed to be great. For years the statesmanship 
of England had been kept from any serious at- 
tempt to grapple with the evil by the doctrine 
that popular education ought not to be the busi- 
ness of a Government. Private charity was eked 
out in a parsimonious and miserable manner by 
a scanty dole from the State ; and as a matter of 
course, where the direst poverty prevailed, and 
naturally brought the extremest need for assist- 
ance to education, there the wants of the place 
were least efficiently supplied. It therefore 
came about that more than two-thirds of the chil- 
dren of the country were absolutely without in- 
struction. One of the first great tasks which Mr. 
Gladstone's Government undertook was to reform 
this condition of things, and to provide England 
for the first time in her history with a system of 
National Education. On February 17, 1870, Mr. 
Forster introduced a bill, having for its object to 
provide for public elementary education in Eng- 
land and Wales. Mr. Forster proposed to estab- 
lish a system of School Boards in England and 
Wales; and to give to each board the power to 
frame by-laws compelling the attendance of all 
children, from five to twelve years of age, within 
the school district. The Government did not see 
their way to a system of direct and universal 
compulsion. They therefore fell back on a com- 
promise, by leaving the power to compel in the 
hands of the local authorities. Existing schools 
were, in many instances, to be adopted by the 
bill, and to receive Government aid, on condition 
that they possessed a certain amount of efficiency 
in education, that they submitted themselves to 
the examination of an undenominational inspect- 
or, and that they admitted a conscience clause 
as part of their regulations. The funds were to 
be procured, partly by local rates, partly by grants 
from the Treasury, and partly by the fees paid in 
the paying schools. There were of course to be 
free schools provided, where the poverty of the 
population was such as, in the opinion of the lo- 
cal authorities, to render gratuitous instruction 
indispensable. 

The bill at first was favorably received. But 
the general harmony of opinion did not last long. 
Mr. Forster found, when he came to examine 
into the condition of the machinery of education 
in England, that there was already a system of 
schools existing under the charge of religious 
bodies of various kinds — the State Church, and 
the Roman Catholic Church, and other author- 
ities. These he proposed to adopt as far as 
possible into his scheme ; to affiliate them, as it 
were, to the Governmental system of education. 
But he had to make some concession to the 
religious principles on which such schools were 
founded. He could not by any stroke of author- 
ity undertake to change them all into secular 
schools. He therefore proposed to meet the 
difficulty by adopting regulations compelling 
every school of this kind which obtained Govern- 
ment aid or recognition to accept a conscience 
clause, by means of which the religious convic- 
tions of parents and children should be scrupu- 
lously regarded in the instruction given during 



the regular school hours. On this point the 
Non-conformists as a body broke away from the 
Government. They laid down the broad princi- 
ple that no State aid whatever should be given 
to any schools but those which were conducted 
on strictly secular and undenominational princi- 
ples. Their principle was that public money, 
the contribution of citizens of all shades of be- 
lief, ought only to be given for such teaching as 
the common opinion of the country was agreed 
upon. The contribution of the Jew, they ar- 
gued, ought not to be exacted in order to teach 
Christianity ; the Protestant rate-payer ought not 
to be compelled to pay for the instruction of 
Roman Catholic children in the tenets of their 
faith ; the Irish Catholic in London or Birming- 
ham ought not to be called upon to pay in any 
way for the teaching of distinctively Protestant 
doctrine. 

Mr. Forster could not admit the principle for 
which they contended. He could not say that 
it would be a fair and equal plan to offer secular 
education, and that alone, to all bodies of the 
community ; for he was well aware that there 
were such bodies who were conscientiously op- 
posed to what was called secular education, and 
who could not agree to accept it. He therefore 
endeavored to establish a system which should 
satisfy the consciences of all the denominations. 
But the Non-conformists would not meet him on 
this ground. They fought Mr. Forster long and 
ably and bitterly. The Liberal minister was 
compelled to accept more than once the aid of 
the Conservative party ; for that party as a whole 
adopted the principle which insisted on religious 
instruction in every system of national education. 
It more than once happened, therefore, that 
Mr. Forster and Mr. Gladstone found themselves 
appealing to the help of Conservatives and of 
Roman Catholics against that dissenting body 
of Englishmen who were usually the main sup- 
port of the Liberal party. It happened too, 
very unfortunately, that at this time Mr. Blight's 
health had so far given way as to compel him to 
seek complete rest from parliamentary duties. 
His presence and his influence with the Non-con- 
formists might perhaps have tended to moderate 
their course of action, and to reconcile them to 
the policy of the Government even on the subject 
of national education ; but his voice was silent 
then, and for long after. The split between the 
Government and the Non-conformists became 
something like a complete severance. Many 
angry and bitter words were spoken in the 
House of Commons on both sides. On one 
occasion there was an almost absolute declara- 
tion on the part of Mr. Gladstone and of Mr. 
Miall. a leading Non-conformist, that they had 
parted company forever. The Education Bill 
was nevertheless a great success. The School 
Boards became really valuable and powerful in- 
stitutions, and the principle of the cumulative 
vote was tested for the first time in their elec- 
tions. When School Boards were first estab- 
lished in the great cities, their novelty and the 
evident importance of the work they had to do 
attracted to them some of the men of most com- 
manding intellect and position. The London 
School Board had as its chairman, for instance, 
Lord Lawrence, the great Indian statesman, 
lately a Viceroy, and for one of its leading mem- 
bers Professor Huxley. An important peculiar- 
ity of the School Boards, too, was the fact, that 
they admitted women to the privileges of mem- 
bership; and this admission was largely availed 
of. Women voted, proposed amendments, sat 
on committees, and in every way took their part 
of the duties of citizenship in the business of 
national education. When the novelty of the 
system wore off' some of the more eminent men 
gradually fell out of the work, but the School 
Boards never tailed to maintain a high and use- 
ful standard of membership. They began and 
continued to be strictly representative institu- 
tions. Most of their work even still remains to 
be done. But, so far as it has gone, there can be 
no doubt of the success it has achieved. It 
must, however, be owned that the Gladstone 
administration was weakened and not strength- 
ened by its education scheme. One of the first 
symptoms of coming danger to Mr. Gladstone's 



7G 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



Government was found in the estrangement of 
the English Non-conformists. 

The Government were a little unfortunate, too, 
as regarded another great reform — that of the 
organization of the army. Mr. Caldwell, the 
War Minister, brought forward a scheme for the 
reconstruction of the army, by combining under 
one system of discipline the regular troops, the 
militia, the volunteers, and the reserve. One 
most important part of the scheme was the abo- 
lition of the purchase system for officers' com- 
missions, and the substitution of promotion ac- 
cording to merit. Except in certain regiments, 
and in certain branches of the service outside 
England itself, the rule was, that an officer ob- 
tained his commission by purchase. Promotion 
was got in the same way. An officer bought a 
step up in the service. A commission was a 
vested interest ; a personal property. The own- 
er had paid so much for it, and he expected to 
get so much for it when he thought fit to sell it. 
The regulation price recognized by law and the 
Horse Guards was not by any means the actual 
price of the commission. It became worth much 
more to the holder, and of course he expected to 
get its real price, not its regulation or nominal 
and imaginary price. This anomalous and ex- 
traordinary system had grown up with the growth 
of the English army, until it seemed in the eyes 
of many an essential condition of the army's ex- 
istence. It found defenders almost everywhere. 
Because the natural courage, energy, and fight- 
ing power of Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotch- 
men had made a good army in spite of this un- 
lucky practice, because the army did not actually 
collapse or wither away under its influence, many 
men were convinced that the army could not get 
on without it. The abolition of the purchase 
system had been advocated by generations of 
reformers without much success. But the ques- 
tion did not become really pressing and practical 
until Mr. Gladstone, on his accession to power, 
resolved to include it in his list of reforms. Of 
course Mr. Cardwell's proposition was bitterly 
and pertinaciously opposed. The principle of 
army purchase was part of a system in which 
large numbers of the most influential class had 
a vested interest. It was part of the aristocratic 
principle. To admit men to commissions in the 
army by pure merit and by mere competition would 
be to deprive the service of its specially aristocrat- 
ic character. A large number of the Conserva- 
tive party set themselves, therefore, not merely 
to oppose but to obstruct the bill. They pro- 
posed all manner of amendments, and raised all 
manner of discussions, in which the same argu- 
ments were repeated over and over again by the 
same speakers in almost the same words. Men 
who had never before displayed the slightest in- 
terest in the saving of the public money, were 
now clamorous opponents of the bill on the 
ground that the abolition of purchase would ren- 
der necessary the outlay of a large sum for com- 
pensation to officers thus deprived of their vested 
interests. This outlay the Liberal Government, 
usually censured by their opponents on the 
ground of their pinching parsimony, were quite 
willing to meet. Mr. Cardwell was prepared to 
make provision for it. Economy, however, be- 
came suddenly a weapon in the hands of some 
of the Conservatives. The session was going 
on, and there seemed little prospect of the Oppo- 
sition being discouraged or slackening in their 
energy. The Government began to see that it 
would be impossible to carry through the vast 
and complicated scheme of army reorganization 
which they had introduced, and Mr. Gladstone 
was resolved that the system of purchase must 
come to an end. It was thought expedient at 
last, and while the bill was still fighting its way 
through committee, to abandon a great part of 
the measure and persevere for the present only 
with those clauses which related to the abolition 
of the system of purchase. Under these condi- 
tions the bill passed its third reading in the Com- 
mons on July 3, 1871, not without a stout resist- 
ance at the last and not by a very overwhelming 
majority. This condition of things gave the ma- 
jority in the House of Lords courage to oppose 
the scheme. A meeting of Conservative peers 
was held, and it was resolved that the Duke of 



Richmond should offer an amendment to the 
motion for the second reading of the Army Pur- 
chase Bill. The Duke of Richmond was exact- 
ly the sort of man that a party under such condi- 
tions would agree upon as the proper person to 
move an amendment. He was an entirely re- 
spectable and safe politician ; a man of great in- 
fluence so far as dignity and territorial position 
were concerned ; a seemingly moderate Tory, 
who showed nothing openly of the mere partisan 
and yet was always ready to serve his party. 
When the motion for the second reading came 
on, the Duke of Richmond moved a cleverly con- 
structed amendment, declaring that the House 
of Lords was unwilling to agree to the motion un- 
til a comprehensive and complete scheme of army 
reorganization should have been laid before it. 
But of course the object of the House of Lords 
was not to obtain farther information ; it was 
simply to get rid of the bill for the present. 
The amendment of the Duke of Richmond was 
adopted. 

Then Mr. Gladstone took a course which be- 
came the subject of keen and embittered con- 
troversy. Purchase in the army was permitted 
only by Royal warrant. The whole system was 
the creation of Royal regulation. The House 
of Commons had pronounced against the sys- 
tem. The House of Lords had not pronounced 
in favor of it. The House of Lords had not 
rejected the measure of the Government, but 
only expressed a wish for delay and for farther 
information. Delay, however, would have been 
fatal to the measure for that session. Mr. Glad- 
stone therefore devised a way for checkmating 
what he knew to be the design of the House of 
Lords. It was an ingenious plan ; it was almost 
an audacious plan ; it took the listener's breath 
away to hear of it. Mr. Gladstone announced 
that as the system of purchase was the creation 
of Royal regulation, he had advised the Queen 
to take the decisive step of cancelling the Royal 
warrant which made purchase legal. A new 
Royal warrant was therefore immediately issued, 
declaring that, on and after November 1 follow- 
ing, all regulations made by her Majesty or any 
of her predecessors regulating or fixing the 
prices at which commissions might be bought, 
or in any way authorizing the purchase or sale 
of such commissions, should be cancelled. As 
far as regarded purchase, therefore, the contro- 
versy came suddenly to an end. The House of 
Lords had practically nothing to discuss. All 
that was left of the Government scheme on 
which the Peers could have anything to say was 
that part of the bill which provided compensa- 
tion for those whom the abolition of the system 
of purchase would deprive of certain vested in- 
terests. For the Lords to reject the bill as it 
now stood would merely be to say that such 
officers should have no compensation. Aston- 
ishment fell upon the minds of most who heard 
Mr. Gladstone's determination. After a mo- 
ment of bewilderment it was received with a 
wild outburst of Liberal exultation. It was felt 
to be a splendid party triumph. The House of 
Lords had been completely foiled. The tables 
had been turned on the Peers. Nothing was 
left for the House of Lords but to pass the bill 
as quickly as possible, coupling its passing, how- 
ever, with a resolution announcing that it was 
passed only in order to secure to officers of the 
army the compensation they were entitled to re- 
ceive, and censuring the Government for having 
attained, "by the exercise of the prerogative 
and without the aid of Parliament," the princi- 
pal object which they contemplated in the bill. 

The House of Lords was then completely de- 
feated. The system of purchase in the army 
was abolished by one sudden and clever strske. 
The Government were victorious over their op- 
ponents. Yet the hearts of many sincere Liber- 
als sank within them as they heard the announce- 
ment of the triumph. Mr. Disraeli condemned 
in the strongest terms the sudden exercise of 
the prerogative of the Crown to help the Min- 
istry out of a difficulty; and many a man of 
mark and influence on the Liberal benches felt 
that there was good ground for the strictures 
of the leader of the Opposition. Mr. Eawcett 
in particular condemned the act of the Govern- 



ment. He insisted that if it had been done by 
a Tory minister it would have been passionately 
denounced by Mr. Gladstone amid the plaudits 
of the whole Liberal party. Mr. Fawcett was a 
man who occupied a remarkable position in the 
House of Commons. In his early manhood he 
met with an accident which entirely destroyed the 
sight of his eyes. He made the noble resolve that 
he would nevertheless follow unflinchingly the 
career he had previously mapped out for himself, 
and would not allow the terrible calamity he had 
suffered to drive him from the active life of the 
political world. His tastes were for politics and 
political economy. He published a manual of 
political economy ; he wrote largely on the sub- 
ject in reviews and magazines ; he was elected 
Professor of the science in his own university, 
Cambridge. He was in politics as well as in eco- 
nomics a pupil of Mr. Mill ; and with the encour- 
agement and support of Mr. Mill he became a 
candidate for a seat in Parliament. He was a 
Liberal of the most decided lone ; but he was 
determined to hold himself independent of party. 
He stood for Southwark against Mr. Layard in 
1857, and was defeated ; he contested Cambridge 
and Brighton at subsequent elections, and at last 
in 1865 he was successful at Brighton. He was 
not long in the House of Commons before it was 
acknowledged that his political career was likely 
to be something of a new force in Parliament, A 
remarkably powerful reasoner, he was capable, 
notwithstanding his infirmity, of making a long 
speech full of figures and of statistical calculations. 
His memory was fortunately so quick atid power- 
ful as to enable him easily to dispense with all the 
appliances which even well-trained speakers com- 
monly have to depend upon when they enter into 
statistical controversy. In Parliament he held 
faithfully to the purpose with which he had en- 
tered it, and was a thorough Liberal in principles, 
but absolutely independent of the expedients and 
sometimes of the mere discipline of party. If he 
believed that the Liberal ministers were going 
wrong, he censured them as freely as though 
they were his political opponents. On this occa- 
sion he felt strongly about the course Mr. Glad- 
stone had taken, and he expressed himself in 
language of unmeasured condemnation. It seems 
hard to understand how any independent man 
could have come to any other conclusion. The 
exercise of the Royal prerogative was undoubt- 
edly legal. Much time was wasted in testifying 
to its legality. The question in dispute was 
whether its sudden introduction in such a man- 
ner was a proper act on the part of the Govern- 
ment; whether it was right to cut short by virtue 
of the Queen's prerogative a debate which had 
previously been carried on without the slightest 
intimation that the controversy was to be settled 
in any other way than that of the ordinary Par- 
liamentary procedure. There seems to be only 
one reasonable answer to this question. The 
course taken by Mr. Gladstone was unusual, un- 
expected, unsustained by any precedent ; it was 
a mere surprise ; it was not fair to the House of 
Lords ; it was not worthy of the occasion, or the 
ministry, or the Liberal principles they professed. 
This great reform could at most have been de- 
layed for only a single session by the House of 
Lords. It is not even certain that the House of 
Lords, if firmly met, would have carried their 
opposition long enough to delay the measure by 
a single session. In any case the time lost would 
not have counted for much ; better by far to have 
waited another session than to have carried the 
point at once by a stroke of policy which seemed 
impatient, petulant, and even unfair. Among 
the many influences already combining to weaken 
Mr. Gladstone's authority, the impression pro- 
duced by this stroke of policy was not the least 
powerful. 

The Ballot Bill was introduced by Mr. Forster 
on February 20, 1871. Its principal object was, 
of course, the introduction of the system of secret 
voting. On entering the polling-place, the voter 
was to mention to the official in charge his name 
and his place of residence. The official, having 
ascertained that he was properly on the register, 
would hand him a stamped paper on which to 
inscribe his vote. The voter was to take the pa- 
per into a separate compartment and there pri- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



77 



rately mark a cross opposite the printed name of 
the candidate for whom he desired to record his 
vote. He was then to fold up the paper in such 
a mnnner as to prevent the mark from being 
seen, and, in the presence of the official, drop it. 
into the urn for containing the votes. By this 
plan Mr. Forster proposed not only to obtain 
secrecy but also to prevent personation. The 
bill likewise undertook to abolish the old prac- 
tice of nominating candidates publicly by speeches 
tit the hustings. Instead of a public nomination, 
it was intended that the candidates should be 
nominated by means of a paper containing the 
names of a proposer and seconder and eight as- 
sentors, all of whom must be registered voters. 
This paper being handed to the returning offi- 
cer would constitute a nomination. Titus was 
abolished one of the most characteristic and 
time- dishonored peculiarities of electioneering. 
Every humorous writer, every satirist with pen- 
cil or pen, from Hogarth to Dickens, had made 
merry with the scenes of the nomination day. In 
England the candidates were proposed and sec- 
onded in face of each other on a public platform in 
some open street or market-place in the presence 
of a vast tumultuous crowd, three-fourths of whom 
were generally drunk, and all of whom were in- 
flamed by the passion of a furious partisanship. 
Fortunate, indeed, was the orator whose speech 
was anything more than dumb -show. Brass 
bands and drums not unusually accompanied the 
efforts of the speakers to make themselves heard. 
Brickbats, dead cats, and rotten eggs came flying 
like bewildering meteors across the eyes of the 
rival politicians on the hustings. The crowds 
generally enlivened the time by a series of faction 
fights among themselves. No ceremonial could 
be at once more useless and more mischievous. 

The Bill introduced by Mr. Forster would 
have deserved the support of all rational beings 
if it proposed no greater reform than simply the 
abolition of this abominable system. But the 
ballot had long become an indispensable necessi- 
ty. The gross and growing corruption and vio- 
lence which disgraced every election began to 
make men feel that something must be done to 
get rid of such hideous abuses. Mr. Bright had 
always been an earnest advocate of the ballot 
system ; and partly, no doubt, under his influence, 
and partly by the teaching of experience and ob- 
servation, Mr. Gladstone became a convert to the 
same opinion. In 1809 a committee of the 
House of Commons was appointed, on the mo- 
tion of Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary, to in- 
quire into the manner of conducting parliamen- 
tary and municipal elections. Its report was on 
the whole decidedly in favor of the principle of 
secret voting. Public opinion came round to 
the principle at once — the public out-of-doors, 
that is; for a great many members of both 
Houses of Parliament were still unconverted. 
Mr. Forster's Bill was stoutly resisted by the 
Conservatives. A good many Liberal members 
liked the ballot, in their hearts, little better than 
the Tories did. The long delays which inter- 
posed between the introduction of Mr. Forster's 
Bill and its passing through the House of Com- 
mons gave the House of Lords a plausible ex- 
cuse for rejecting it altogether. The Bill was 
not read a third time in the Commons until Au- 
gust 8 ; it was not sent up to the Lords until the 
10th of that month — a date later than that usu- 
ally fixed for the close of the session. Lord 
Shaftesbury moved that the Bill be rejected on the 
ground that there was no time left for a proper 
consideration of it, and his motion was carried by 
ninety-seven votes to forty-eight. Mr. Gladstone 
accepted the decision of the Lords as a mere pass- 
ing delay, and with the beginning of the next 
session the ballot came up again. It was pre- 
sented in the form of a Bill to amend the laws re- 
lating to procedure at parliamentary and munici- 
pal elections, and it included, of course, the intro- 
duction of the system of secret voting. The Bill 
passed quickly through the House of Commons. 
Those who most disliked it began now to see 
that they must make up their minds to meet 
their fate. At the instance of the House of 
Lords, however, the ballot was introduced as an 
experiment, and the Act was passed, to continue 
in force for eight years ; that is, until the end of 



1880. We may anticipate matters a little by 
saying that no measure of reform introduced 
through all that season of splendid reforming 
energy has given more universal satisfaction or 
worked with happier effect than the ballot. 

The University Tests Bill was one of the great- 
est measures carried successfully into legislation 
during this season of unparalleled activity. The 
effect of this Bill was to admit all lay students 
of whatever faith to the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge on equal terms. This settled 
practically a controversy and removed a griev- 
ance which had been attracting keen public in- 
terest for at least five-and-tbirty years. The 
Government also passed a Trades Union Bill, 
moderating, as has already been shown, the leg- 
islation which bore harshly on the workmen. 
They established by Act of Parliament the Lo- 
cal Government Board, a new department of the 
administration intrusted with the care of the 
public health, the control of the Poor Law sys- 
tem, and all regulations applying to the business 
of districts throughout the country. The Gov- 
ernment repealed the ridiculous and almost for- 
gotten Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. 

The popularity of Mr. Gladstone's Government 
was all the time somewhat impaired by the line 
of action, and even perhaps by the personal de- 
portment, of some of its members. Mr. Lowe's 
budgets were not popular ; and Mr. Lowe had a 
taste for sarcasm which it was pleasant, no doubt, 
to indulge in at the expense of heavy men, but 
which was, like other pleasant things, a little 
dangerous when enjoyed too freely. One of Mr. 
Lowe's budgets contained a proposition to make 
up for deficiency of income by a tax on matches. 
The match trade rose up in arms against the 
proposal. The trade was really a very large 
one, employing vast numbers of poor people, 
both in the manufacture and the sale, especially 
in the east end of London. All the little boys 
and girls of the metropolis whose poor bread de- 
pended on the trade arose in infantile insurrection 
against Mr. Lowe. There were vast processions 
of match-makers and match-sellers to Palace 
Yard to protest against the tax. The contest 
was pitiful, painful, ludicrous ; no Ministry could 
endure it long. Mr. Lowe was only too glad to 
withdraw from his unenviable position. It was 
not pleasant to be regarded as a sort of ogre by 
thousands of poor little ragged boys and girls. 
Mr. Lowe withdrew his unlucky proposal, and 
set himself to work to repair by other ways and 
means the ravages which warlike times had made 
in his financial system. Another member of the 
Administration, Mr. Ayrton, a man of much abil- 
ity but still more self-confidence, was constantly 
bringing himself and his Government into quar- 
rels. He was blessed with a gift of offence. If 
a thing could be done either civilly or rudely, 
Mr. Ayrton was pretty sure to do it rudely. 
He was impatient with dull people, and did not 
always remember that those unhappy persons 
not only have their feelings, but sometimes have 
their votes. He quarrelled with officials ; he quar- 
relled with the newspapers ; he seemed to think a 
civil tongue gave evidence of a feeble intellect. 
He pushed his way along, trampling on people's 
prejudices with about as much consideration as 
a steam-roller shows for the gravel it crushes. 
Even when Mr. Ayrton was in the right he had 
a wrong way of showing it. 

The Emperor Napoleon had made war upon 
Prussia to recover his military popularity, which 
was much injured by the Mexican expedition 
and its ghastly failure. He forced the quarrel 
on the pretext that the Spanish people had in- 
vited a distant relation of the King of Prussia 
to become Sovereign of Spain. Louis Napo- 
leon managed to put himself completely in the 
wrong. The King of Prussia at once induced 
his relative to withdraw from the candidature 
in order not to disturb the susceptibilities of 
Fiance; and then the French Government 
pressed for a general pledge that the King of 
Prussia would never on any future occasion al- 
low of any similar candidature. When it came 
to this there was an end to negotiation. It was 
clear then that the Emperor was resolved to have 
a quarrel. Count Bismarck must have smiled a 
grim smile. His enemy had delivered himself 



into Bismarck's hands. The Emperor had been 
for some time in failing health. He had not 
been paying much attention to the details of his 
administration. False security and self-conceit 
had operated among his generals and his War 
Department to the utter detriment of the army. 
Nothing was ready. The whole system was fall- 
ing to pieces. Long after France had declared 
war, the army that was to go to Berlin was only 
dragging heavily towards the frontier. The ex- 
perience of what had happened to Austria might 
have told any one that the moment Prussia saw 
her opportunity she would move with the direct 
swiftness of an eagle's flight. But the French 
army stuck as if it was in mud. What every 
one expected came to pass. The Prussians cam3 
down on the French like the rush of a torrent. 
The fortunes of the war were virtually decided 
in a day. Then the French lost battle after 
battle. The Emperor dared not return to Paris. 
The defence — for the Prussians soon became 
the invaders — was carried on with regard to the 
Emperor's political fortunes rather than to the 
military necessities of the hour. There were 
nothing but French defeats until there came at 
last the crowning disaster of Sedan. The Em- 
peror surrendered his sword, and was a captive 
in the hands of his enemies. The Second Em- 
pire was gone in a moment. Paris proclaimed 
the Republic ; the Empress Eugenie fled to Eng- 
land; the conqueror at Versailles was hailed as 
German Emperor. France lost two provinces, 
Alsace and Lorraine, and had to pay an enor- 
mous fine. 

The sympathies of the English people general- 
ly were at first almost altogether with Prussia; 
but when the Empire fell the feeling suddenly 
changed. It was the common idea that the 
Prussians ought to have been content with the 
complete destruction of the Bonapartist Empire 
and have made generous terms with the Repub- 
lic. Great popular meetings were held in Lon- 
don, and in various provincial cities, to express 
sympathy with the hardly - entreated French. 
Many persons everywhere thought the Govern- 
ment ought to do something to assist the French 
Republic. Some were of opinion that the glory 
of England would suffer if she did not get into 
a fight with some Power or other. It came out, 
in the course of the eager diplomatic discussions 
which were going on, that there had been some 
secret talk at different times of a private engage- 
ment between France and Prussia which would 
have allowed France on certain conditions to an- 
nex Belgium. This astounding revelation ex- 
cited alarm and anger in England. The Gov- 
ernment met that possible danger by at once 
pressing upon France and Prussia a new treaty, 
by which these Powers bound themselves jointly 
with England to maintain the independence of 
Belgium and to take up arms against any State 
invading it. The Government might fairly claim 
to have thus provided satisfactorily against any 
menace to the integrity and independence of 
Belgium, and they prepared against the more 
general dangers of the hour by asking for a large 
vote to enable them to strengthen the military 
defences of the country. But they were serious- 
ly embarrassed by the manner in which Russia 
suddenly proposed to deal with the Treaty of 
Paris. One article of that Treaty declared that 
"the Black Sea is neutralized; its waters and 
its ports, thrown open to the mercantile marine 
of every nation, are formally and in perpetuity 
interdicted to the flag of war, either of the 
Powers possessing its coasts or of any other Pow- 
er," and the Sultan of Turkey and the Emperor 
of Russia engaged to establish or maintain no 
military or maritime arsenals on the shores of 
that sea. Russia now took advantage, of the 
war between France and Prussia to say that she 
would not submit to be bound by that article of 
the Treaty any longer. The Russian statesmen 
pleaded as a justification of this blunt and sud- 
den proceeding that the Treaty of Paris had been 
ignored by other Powers and in a variety of ways 
since the time of its signature, and that Kussia- 
could not be expected to endure forever an ar- 
ticle which bore heavily, directly, and specially 
upon her. 

The manner of making the announcement was 



78 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



startling, ominous, and offensive. But there real- 
ly was not much that any English statesman 
could do to interfere with Russia's declared in- 
tentions. It was not likely that France and 
Prussia would stop just then from the death- 
grapple in which they were engaged to join in 
coercing Russia to keep to the disputed article 
in the Treat}'. Austria, of course, would not un- 
der such circumstances undertake to. interfere. 
It would have been a piece of preposterous quix- 
otry on the part of England to act alone. To 
enforce the Treaty was out of the question ; but, 
on the other hand, it did not look seemly that the 
European powers should put up quite tamely with 
the dictatorial resolve of Russia. The ingenious 
mind of Count Bismarck found a way of putting 
a fair show on the action of Europe. At his 
suggestion a conference of the representatives of 
the powers which had signed the Treaty was held 
in London to talk the whole matter over. This 
graceful little fiction was welcomed by all diplo- 
matists. The conference met on January 17, 
1871, with every becoming appearance of a full 
belief in the minds of all its members that the 
Russian Government had merely announced its 
wish to have the clause in the Treaty abrogated 
as a matter for the consideration of the European 
powers, and that the conference was to be assem- 
bled "without any foregone conclusion as to its 
results." Then the conference solemnly agreed 
upon a Treaty abrogating the clause for the neu- 
tralization of the Black Sea. There was some- 
thing a little farcical about the whole transaction. 
It did not tend to raise the credit or add to the 
popularity of the English Government. We do 
not know that there was anything better to do ; 
we can only say that the Government deserves 
commiseration which at an important European 
crisis can do nothing better. 

The American Government now announced 
that the time had come when they must take 
some decided steps for the settlement of the Ala- 
bama claims. Attempts had already been made 
at a convention for the settlement of the claims. 
In one instance a convention, devised by Mr. Rev- 
erdy Johnson, then American Minister in Eng- 
land, had actually been signed by Lord Claren- 
don, Foreign Secretary, whose death in June, 
1870, was followed by Lord Granville's removal 
from the Colonial to the Foreign Office. The 
Senate of the United States, however, rejected 
this convention by a majority of fifty-four to one, 
and Mr. Reverdy Johnson resigned his office. 
The doom of the convention wns chiefly brought 
about by the efforts of Mr. Charles Sumner, a 
leading member of the Senate of the United 
States. Mr. Sumner was a man of remarkable 
force of character, a somewhat ' ' masterful " tem- 
perament, to use an expressive provincial word, 
a temperament corresponding with his great stat- 
ure, his stately presence, and his singularly hand- 
some and expressive face. Mr. Sumner had been 
for the greater part of his life an enthusiastic 
admirer of England and English institutions. 
He had made himself acquainted with England 
and Englishmen, and was a great favorite in Eng- 
lish society. He was a warm friend of Mr. Cob- 
den, Mr. Bright, the Duke of Argyll, and many 
other eminent English public men. He was par- 
ticularly enthusiastic about England because of 
the manner in which she had emancipated her 
slaves and the emphatic terms in which English 
society al\va} r s expressed its horror of the system 
of slavery. When the American Civil War broke 
out he expected with full confidence to find the 
sympathies of England freely given to the side 
of the North. He was struck with amazement 
when lie found that they were to so great an ex- 
tent given to the South. But when he saw that 
the Alabama and other Southern cruisers had 
been built in England, manned in England, and 
allowed to leave our ports with apparently the 
applause of three-fourths of the representative 
men of England, his feelings towards this coun- 
try underwent a sudden and a most complete 
change. He now persuaded himself that the 
sympathies of the English people were actually 
with slavery, and that England was resolved to 
lend her best help for the setting up of a slave- 
owning Republic to the destruction of the Ameri- 
can Union. 



Mr. Sumner was mistaken in concluding that 
love of slavery and hatred of the Union dictated 
the foolish things that were often said and the 
unrightful things that were sometimes done by 
England. His mind, however, became filled with 
a fervor of anger against England. The zeal of 
his cause ate him up. All his love for England 
turned into hate. During all his career Mr. 
Sumner had been a professed lover of peace ; 
had made peace his prevailing principle of action ; 
and yet he now spoke and acted as if he were 
determined that there must be war between Eng- 
land and the United States. Mr. Sumner de- 
nounced the convention made by Mr. Reverdy 
Johnson with a force of argument and of pas- 
sionate eloquence which would have borne down 
all opposition if the Senate had not already been 
almost unanimously with him. It is right to say 
that the particular convention agreed on between 
Lord Clarendon and Mr. Reverdy Johnson does 
not seem to have been one that the American 
Senate could reasonably be expected to accept, 
or that could possibly give satisfaction to the 
American people. The defect of this convention 
was that it made the whole question a mere mat- 
ter of individual claims. It professed to have 
to deal with a number of .personal and private 
claims of various kinds, pending since a former 
settlement in 1853 — claims made on the one side 
by British subjects against the American Gov- 
ernment, and on the other by American citizens 
against the English Government ; and it pro- 
posed to throw in the Alabama claims with all 
the others, and have a convention for the gener- 
al clearance of the whole account. The claim 
set up by the United States on account of the 
cruise of the Alabama was first of all a national 
claim, and this way of dealing with it could not 
possibly satisfy the American people. 

The English Government wisely gave way. 
They consented to send out a Commission to 
Washington to confer with an American Com- 
mission, and to treat the whole question in dis- 
pute as national and not merely individual. The 
Commission was to enter upon all the various 
subjects of dispute unsettled between England 
and the United States ; the Alabama claims, the 
San Juan Boundary, and the Canadian Fishery 
Question. The Dominion of Canada was to be 
represented on the Commission. The English 
Commissioners were Earl de Grey and Ripon 
(afterwards created Marquis of Ripon, in re- 
turn for his services at Washington), Sir Staf- 
ford Northcote, Mr. Montagu Bernard, Professor 
of International Law at the University of Ox- 
ford ; and Sir Edward Thornton, English Min- 
ister at Washington. Sir John A. Macdonald 
represented Canada. The American Commis- 
sioners were Mr. Hamilton Fish, Secretary of 
State ; General Schenck, afterwards American 
Minister in England ; Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis, 
Mr. Justice Nelson, Mr. Justice Williams, and 
Mr. E. R. Hoar. 

The Commissioners held a long series of meet- 
ings in Washington, and at length arrived at a 
basis of arbitration. The Treaty of Washington 
acknowledged the international character of the 
dispute, and it opened with the remarkable an- 
nouncement that "Her Britannic Majesty has 
authorized her High Commissioners and Pleni- 
potentiaries to express, in a friendly spirit, the 
regret felt by Her Majesty's Government for the 
escape, under whatever circumstances, of the 
Alabama and other vessels from British ports, 
and for the depredations committed by those 
vessels." This very unusual acknowledgment 
ought not in itself to be considered as anything 
of a humiliation. But when compared with the 
stand which English Ministers had taken not 
many years before, this was indeed a considera- 
ble change of attitude. It is not surprising that 
many Englishmen chafed at the appearance of 
submission which it presented. The Treaty then 
laid down three rules. These rules were: "A 
neutral Government is bound, first, to use due 
diligence to prevent the fitting-out, arming, or 
equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel 
which it has reasonable ground to believe is in- 
tended to cruise or to carry on war against a 
Power with which it is at peace, and also to use 
like diligence to prevent the departure from its 



jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or 
carry on war as above, such vessel having been 
specially adapted in whole or in part, within such 
jurisdiction, to warlike use. Secondly, not to 
permit or suffer either belligerent to make use 
of its ports or waters as the base of naval opera- 
tions against the other, or for the purpose of the 
renewal or augmentation of military supplies or 
arms, or the recruitment of men. Thirdly, to 
exercise due diligence in its own ports and 
waters, and as to all persons within its jurisdic- 
tion, to prevent any violation of the foregoing ob- 
ligations and duties." 

The British Commissioners followed up the 
acceptance of these three rules by a saving 
clause, declaring that the English Government 
could not assent to them as a "statement of 
principles of international law which were in 
force at the time when the claims arose;" but 
that " in order to evince its desire of strengthen- 
ing the friendly relations between the two coun- 
tries, and of making satisfactory provision for 
the future," it agreed that in deciding the ques- 
tions arising out of the claims these principles 
should be accepted, " and the high contracting 
parties agree to observe these rules between 
themselves in future, and to bring them to the 
knowledge of other maritime Powers, and to in- 
vite them to accede to them." The Treaty then 
provided for the settlement of the Alabama 
claims by a tribunal of five arbitrators, one to 
be appointed by the Queen, and the others 
respectively by the President of the United 
States, the King of Italy, the President of the 
Swiss Confederation, and the Emperor of Bra- 
zil. This tribunal was to meet in Geneva, and 
was to decide by a majority all the questions 
submitted to it. The treaty further provided 
for a tribunal to settle what may be called indi- 
vidual claims on either side, and another com- 
mission to meet afterwards at Halifax, Nova 
Scotia, and deal with the Fishery Question, an 
old outstanding dispute as to the reciprocal 
rights of British and American subjects to fish 
on each other's coasts. It referred the ques- 
tion of the northern boundary between the Brit- 
ish North American territories and the United 
States to the arbitration of the German Emper- 
or. It also opened the navigation of the St. 
Lawrence and other rivers. 

Some delay was caused in the meeting of the 
tribunal of arbitration at Geneva by the sudden 
presentation on the part of the American Gov- 
ernment of what were called the indirect claims. 
To the surprise of everybody, the American case 
when presented was found to include claims for 
vast and indeed almost limitless damages, for in- 
direct losses alleged to be caused by the cruise of 
the Alabama and the other vessels. The loss by 
the transfer of trade to English vessels, the loss 
by increased rates of insurance, and all imaginable 
losses incident to the prolongation of the war, 
were now made part of the American claims. 
It was clear that if such a principle were ad- 
mitted there was no possible reason why the 
claims should not include every dollar spent in 
the whole operations of the war and in supplying 
any of the war's damages, from the first day 
when the Alabama put to sea. Even men like 
Mr. Bright, who had been devoted friends of 
the North during the war, protested against this 
insufferable claim. It was, indeed, a profound 
mistake. The arbitration was on the point of 
being broken off. The excitement in England 
was intense. The American Government had 
at last to withdraw the claims. The Geneva 
arbitrators of their own motion declared that 
all such claims were invalid and contrary to 
international law. 

The decision of the Geneva Tribunal went 
against England. The court were unanimous 
in finding England responsible for the acts of 
the Alabama. A majority found her responsi- 
ble for the acts of the Florida and for some of 
those of the Shenandoah, but not responsible 
for those of other vessels. They awarded a sum 
of about three millions and a quarter sterling as 
compensation for all losses and final settlements 
of all claims including interest. The German 
Emperor decided in favor of the American claim 
to the small island of San Juan, near Vancou- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



79 



Ter's Island, n question remaining unsettled since 
the Oregon Treaty. San Juan had for years 
been in a somewhat hazardous condition of 
joint occupation by England and the United 
States. It was evacuated by England, in con- 
sequence of the award, at the close of Novem- 
ber, 1873. 

The principle of arbitration had not thus far 
worked in a manner calculated greatly to delight 
the English people. In each case the award 
had gone decidedly against them. No doubt 
it had gone against them because the right of 
each case was against them ; and those who 
inbuilt to arbitration have no business to com- 
plain because the decision is not given in their 
favor. However that may be, it is certain that 
the effect of the Geneva arbitration was to create 
a sore and angry feeling among Englishmen in 
general. The feeling found expression with 
some ; smouldered in sullenness with others. 
It was unreasonable and unjust; but it was not 
altogether unnatural; and it had its effect on 
the popularity of Mr. Gladstone's Government. 

The opening of the Session of 1872 was made 
melancholy by the announcement that Lord 
Mayo, the Viceroy of India, had been killed by a 
fanatical assassin in a convict settlement, on one 
of the Andaman Islands which the Viceroy was 
inspecting. Lord Mayo had borne himself well 
in his difficult position, and had won the ad- 
miration of men of all parties by his firmness, 
his energy, his humanity, and his justice. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE FALL OP THE GREAT ADMINISTRATION. 

Tin: Liberal Ministry continued somehow to 
fall off in popularity. Mr. Gladstone was pro- 
foundly serious in his purposes of reform ; and 
very serious men are seldom popular in a society 
like that of London. The long series of bold 
and vigorous reforms was undoubtedly causing 
the public to lose its breath. The inevitable re- 
action was setting in. No popularity, no skill, 
no cunning in the management of men, no qual- 
ity or endowment on the part of the Prime-min- 
ister, could have wholly prevented that result. 
Mr. Gladstone was not cunning in the manage- 
ment of men. He would probably have despised 
himself for availing of such a craft had he pos- 
sessed it. He showed his feelings too plainly. 
If men displeased him he seldom took the trouble 
to conceal his displeasure. It was murmured 
among his followers that he was dictatorial ; and 
no doubt he was dictatorial in the sense that he 
had strong purposes himself, and was earnest in 
trying to press them upon other men. His very 
religious opinions served to interfere with his 
social popularity. He seemed to be a curious 
blending of the English High Churchman and 
the Scottish Presbyterian. He displeased the 
ordinary English middle class by leaning too 
much to Ritualism ; and, on the other hand, he 
often offended the Roman Catholics by his im- 
passioned diatribes against the Pope and the 
Church of Rome. One or two appointments 
made by or under the authority of Mr. Glad- 
stone gave occasion to considerable controversy 
and to something like scandal. One of these 
was the appointment of the Attorney-general, 
Sir Robert Collier, to a Puisne Judgeship of the 
Court of Common Pleas, in order technically to 
qualify him for a seat on the bench of a new 
Court of Appeal — that is to say, to become one 
of the paid members of the Judicial Committee 
of the Privy Council. The statute required that 
every judge of the Court of Appeal should have 
been a judge of one of the ordinary courts; and 
Sir Robert Collier was passed through the Court 
of Common Pleas in order that he might have 
the technical qualification. There was not the 
slightest suggestion of any improper motive on 
the part of .Mr. Gladstone, or lack of legal or 
judicial fitness on the part of Sir Robert Collier. 
On the contrary, it was admitted that Sir Rob- 
ert Collier had helped the Government out of a 
difficulty by taking an appointment which sever- 
al judges had declined, and which had not quite 
such a position as the traditions of his office 
would have entitled him to expect. It seemed, 
however, as if there was something of a trick in 



the act which thus passed him through the one 
court in order to give him a technical qualifica- 
tion for the other. A vote of censure on the 
Government was moved in the House of Lords, 
and the universal impression was that it would 
be carried. The vote of censure was, however, 
rejected by eighty-nine against eighty-seven. A 
similar attempt was made in the House of Com- 
mons, and was defeated ; only, however, by a 
majority of twenty-seven, a small majority in the 
House where the strength of the Government was 
supposed to lie. There can be no doubt that, 
althougli in neither House of Parliament could 
any expression of censure be obtained, the 
"Colliery explosion," as it was called, gave a 
downward push to the declining popularity of 
Mr. Gladstone's ■> "ministration. 

The "liquor interest," too, was soon in arms 
against him. The United Kingdom Alliance 
" for the suppression of the liquor traffic " had of 
late years been growing so strong as to become a 
positive influence in politics. Its object was to 
bring about the adoption of legislation which 
should leave it in the power of a two-thirds 
majority in each locality to stop altogether, if it 
were so thought fit, the public sale of intoxicat- 
ing drinks. The Parliamentary leader of the 
agitation was Sir Wilfrid Lawson, a man of po- 
sition, of great energy, and of thorough earnest- 
ness. Sir Wilfrid Lawson was not, however, 
merely energetic and earnest. He had a pecul- 
iarly effective style of speaking, curiously un- 
like that which might be expected from the ad- 
vocate of an austere and somewhat fanatical sort 
of legislation. He was a humorist of a fresh and 
vigorous order, and he always took care to 
amuse his listeners and never allowed his 
speeches to bore them. The Alliance was al- 
ways urging on the Government and public opin- 
ion against the drink traffic, and it became clear 
that something must be done to regulate the 
trade. Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary, brought 
in a Bill which the Alliance condemned as fee- 
bleness, and which the publicans resented as op- 
pression. The Bill increased the penalties for 
drunkenness, and shortened the hours during 
which public-houses might be kept open on Sun- 
days and on week-days as well. The effect of 
the passing of this measure was to throw the 
publicans into open hostility to the Government. 
The publicans were a numerous body ; they were 
well organized ; the net-work of their trade and 
their Association spread all over the kingdom. 
The hostile feelings of some were perhaps not 
unnaturally embittered by the fact that many 
speakers and writers treated all publicans alike, 
made no distinction between the reputable and 
the disreputable, though it was well known that 
a large proportion of the publicans carried on a 
respectable trade, and were losers rather than 
gainers by drunkenness. The natural result of 
indiscriminate attack was to cause an indiscrim- 
inate alliance for the purposes of defence. 

The establishment of a republic in France 
could not be without its influence on English 
politics. A certain amount of more or less 
vague republican sentiment is always afloat on 
the surface of English radicalism. The estab- 
lishment of the French Republic now came as a 
climax. At many of the great meetings which 
were held in London, and in most of the Eng- 
lish cities, to express sympathy with the strug- 
gling republic a good deal of very outspoken re- 
publicanism made itself heard. There could be 
no doubt that a considerable proportion of the 
working-men in the cities were republicans in 
sentiment. English writers who were not by 
any means of the sentimental school, but, on the 
contrary, were somewhat hard and cold in their 
dogmatism, began to publish articles in "ad- 
vanced " reviews and magazines, distinctly pcint- 
ing out the logical superiority of the republican 
theory. Men were already discussing the pos- 
sibility of a declared republican party being 
formed both in and out of Parliament ; not, 
indeed, a party clamoring for the instant pulling 
down of the monarchy — no one thought of that — 
but a party which would avow itself republican 
in principle, and acknowledge that its object was 
to bring about a change in public sentiment 
which might prepare the way for a republic in 



the time to come. But France, which had given 
the impulse, gave also the shock that brought 
reaction. The wild theories, the monstrous ex- 
cesses, the preposterous theatricism, of the Paris 
Commune had a very chilling effect on the ardor 
of English republicans. The movement in Eng- 
land had, however, one or two curious episodes 
before it sank into quiescence. 

In March, 1872, Sir Charles Dilke brought on 
a motion in the House of Commons for inquir- 
ing into the manner in which the income and 
allowances of the Crown are expended. Sir 
Charles Dilke had been for some months of the 
preceding autumn the best abused man in Great 
Britain. His name appeared over and over 
again in the daily papers. The comic papers 
caricatured "Citizen Dilke " every week. The 
telegraph wires carried his doings and speeches 
everywhere. American correspondents " inter- 
viewed " him, and pictured him as the future 
President of England. He went round the 
towns of the North of England, delivering a lect- 
ure on the expenses of royalty ; and his progress 
was marked by more or less serious riots every- 
where. Life was sacrificed in more than one 
of these tumults. The working-men of London 
and of the North held great meetings to express 
their approval of his principles and conduct. To 
increase and perplex the excitement, the Prince 
of Wales fell ill, and if Sir Charles Dilke had 
personally caused his illness he could not have 
been more bitterly denounced by some speakers 
and writers. He was represented as a monster 
of disloyalty, who had chosen to assail the Queen 
(against whom, it is only fair to say, he had never 
uttered a disparaging word) while her eldest son 
lay struggling with death. The Prince of Wales, 
given over by all the doctors, recovered ; and in 
the outburst of public gladness and loyalty that 
followed his restoration to health Sir Charles 
Dilke was almost forgotten. But he had been 
challenged to repeat in the House of Commons 
the statements that he had made in the countrv. 
He answered the challenge by bringing forward 
the motion to inquire into the manner in which 
the income and allowances of the Crown were 
spent. There was unmistakable courage in the 
cool, steady way in which he rose to propose 
his motion. Sir Charles Dilke knew that every 
one in that House, save three or four alone, was 
bitterly opposed to him. It is a hard trial to the 
nerves to face such an audience. But neither 
then nor after did he show the slightest sign of 
quailing. His speech was well got up as to facts, 
well arranged, and evidently well committed to 
memory, but it was not eloquent. The warmth 
of Mr. Gladstone's reply was almost, startling by 
sheer force of contrast to Sir Charles Dilke's 
quiet, dry, and labored style. No one expected 
that Mr. Gladstone would be so passionately 
merciless as he proved to be. His vehemence, 
forcing the House into hot. temper again, was one 
cause at least of the extraordinary tumult that 
arose when Sir Charles Dilke's friend and ally, 
Mr. Auberon Herbert, rose to speak, and de- 
clared himself also a republican. This was the 
signal for as extraordinary a scene as the- House 
of Commons has ever exhibited. The tumult 
became so great, that if it had taken place at any 
public meeting it would have been called a riot, 
and would have required the interference of the 
police. Some hundreds of strong, excited, furi- 
ous men were shouting and yelling with the ob- 
ject of interrupting the speech and drowning the 
voice of one man. The Speaker of the House 
of Commons is usually an omnipotent authority, 
but on this occasion the Speaker was literally 
powerless. There was no authority which could 
overawe that House. Men of education and po- 
sition — university men, younger sons of peers, 
great land-owners, officers in crack cavalry regi- 
ments, the very elite, many of them, of the Eng- 
lish aristocracy, became for the moment a merely 
furious mob. They roared, hissed, gesticulated ; 
the shrill "cock-crow," unheard in the House 
of Commons for a whole generation, shrieked 
once more in the ears of the bewildered officials. 

It was clear that there was no republican par- 
ty, properly so called, in the coontrj. Some of 
the "philosophical Radicals,'' who were most 
strongly republican in sentiment and conviction, 



so 



A SHOKT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



declared in the most explicit words that they 
would not make the slightest effort to agitate in 
favor of a republic; that they did not think the 
difference between a republic and the British 
Constitution was worth the trouble of a long agi- 
tation. If a republic were to come, they said, 
it would come in good time. England could af- 
ford to wait. When this philosophical mood of 
mind prevailed among republicans it was clear 
that the question of a republic had not, as the 
phrase is, "come up." 

A new figure did, however, arise about that 
time in English politics. It was that of the Eng- 
lish agricultural laborer as a political agitator 
and member of a trades-union. Por years and 
years the working-man in cities had played an 
influential part in every agitation. All the while 
the rural laborer was supposed to be entirely out 
■of the play. No one troubled about him. Some- 
times a London newspaper sent down a special 
correspondent to explore the condition of some 
village, and he wrote back descriptions which 
made the flesh creep about the miseries of some 
laborer's family of eight or nine who habitually 
slept in one room, and in not a few instances in 
one bed. That was the rural laborer at his worst. 
At his best he seemed a picture of hard-working, 
cleanly, patient, and almost hopeless poverty. 
Mr. Disraeli and the Tory landlords said he was 
too contented and happy to need a change ; most 
other people thought that he was rendered too 
stolid by the monotonous misery of his condition. 
Suddenly, in the spring of 1872, not long after 
the opening of Parliament, vague rumors began 
to reach London of a movement of some kind 
among the laborers of South Warwickshire. It 
was first reported that they had asked for an 
increase of wages, then that they were actually 
forming a laborers' union, after the pattern of the 
artisans ; then that they were on strike. There 
came accounts of meetings of rural laborers — 
meetings positively where men made speeches. 
Instantly the London papers sent down their spe- 
cial correspon dents, and for weeks the movement 
among the agricultural laborers of South War- 
wickshire — the country of Shakspeare — became 
the sensation of London. How the thing first 
came about is not very clear. But it seems that 
in one of the South Warwickshire villages, when 
there was sad and sullen talk of starvation, it 
occurred to some one to suggest a "strike" 
against the landlords. The thing took fire some- 
how. A few men accepted it at once. In the 
neighboring village was a man who, although 
only a day-laborer, had been long accustomed to 
act as a volunteer preacher of Methodism, and 
who by his superior intelligence, his good char- 
acter, and his effective way of talking, had ac- 
quired a great influence among his fellows. This 
man was Joseph Arch. He was consulted, and 
he approved of the notion. He was asked if he 
would get together a meeting and make a speech, 
and he consented. Calling a meeting of day- 
laborers then was almost as bold a step as pro- 
claiming a revolution ; yet it was done some- 
how. There were no circulars, no placards, none 
of the machinery which we all associate with the 
getting up of a meeting. The news had to be 
passed on by word of mouth that a meeting was 
to be held and where ; the incredulous had to be 
convinced that there was really to be a meetin 
the timid had to be prevailed on to take courage 
and go. The meeting was held under a great 
chestnut-tree, which thereby acquired a sort of 
fame. There a thousand laborers came together 
and were addressed by Joseph Arch. He carried 
them all with him. His one great idea — great 
and bold to them, simple and small to us — was 
to form a laborers' union like the trades-unions 
of the cities. The idea was taken up with en- 
thusiasm. New branches were formed every day. 
Arch kept on holding meetings and addressing 
crowds. The whole movement passed, natural- 
ly and necessarily, into his hands. How com- 
pletely it was a rural laborers' movement, how 
little help or guidance it received in its origin 
from other sources, how profoundly isolated from 
the outer and active world was its scene, may be 
understood from the fact that it was nearly six 
weeks in action before its very existence was 
known in London. Then the special correspond- 



ents went down to the spot and turned a blaze 
of light on it. Mr. Auberon Herbert and other 
active reformers appeared on the scene and threw 
themselves into the movement. Meetings were 
held in various villages, and Mr. Arch found him- 
self in the constant companionship of members 
of Parliament, leaders of political organizations, 
and other unwonted associates. The good-sense 
of the sturdy laborer never forsook the leader of 
the movement, nor did he ever show any inclina- 
tion to subordinate his enterprise to any political 
agitation. The laborers took the help of politi- 
cal leaders so far as the mere conduct of the or- 
ganization was concerned, but they did not show 
any inclination to allow their project to expand 
as yet beyond its simple and natural limits. On 
the other hand, it was clear that, so far as the 
laborers had any political sympathies, they were 
with Liberalism and against Toryism. This, 
too, was a little surprise for the public. Most 
persons had supposed that a race of beings 
brought up for generations under the exclusive 
tutorship of the landlord, the vicar, and the wives 
of the landlords and the vicars, would have had 
any political tendencies they possessed drilled and 
drummed into the grooves of Toryism. The 
shock of surprise with which the opposite idea 
impressed itself upon the minds of the Conserva- 
tive squires found ready and angry expression. 
The landlords in most places declared themselves 
against the movement of the laborers. Some of 
them denounced it in unmeasured language. 
Mr. Disraeli at once sprung to the front as the 
champion of feudal aristocracy and the British 
country squire. The controversy was taken up 
in the House of Commons, and served, if it did 
nothing else, to draw all the more attention to 
the condition of the British laborer. 

One indirect but necessary result of the agita- 
tion was to remind the public of the injustice 
done to the rural population when they were left 
unenfranchised at the time of the passing of the 
last Reform Bill. The injustice was strongly 
pressed upon the Government, and Mr. Glad- 
stone frankly acknowledged that it would be im- 
possible to allow things to remain long in their 
anomalous state. In truth, when the Reform 
Bill was passed nobody supposed that the rural 
population were capable of making any use of a 
vote. Therefore the movement which began in 
Warwickshire took two directions when the im- 
mediate effects of the partial strike were over. 
A permanent union of laborers was formed, cor- 
responding generally in system with the organi- 
zations of the cities. The other direction was 
distinctly political. The rural population, through 
their leaders, joined with the reformers of the 
cities for the purpose of obtaining an equal fran- 
chise in town and country ; in other words, for 
the enfranchisement of the peasantry. The 
emancipation of the rural laborers began when 
the first meeting answered the appeals of Joseph 
Arch. The rough-and-ready peasant preacher 
had probably little idea, when he made his speech 
under the chestnut-tree, that he was speaking 
the first words of a new chapter of the country's 
history. 

A few lines ought, perhaps, to be spared to 
one of the most remarkable instances of disputed 
identity on record. A claim was suddenly made 
upon the Tichborne baronetcy and estates by a 
man who came from Australia, and who an- 
nounced himself as the heir to the title and the 
property. He declared that he was the Sir 
Roger Tichborne who was supposed to have gone 
down with the wreck of the Bella, sailing from 
Rio, in South America, years before. "The 
Claimant " was curiously unlike what people re- 
membered Roger Tichborne, not only in face, 
but in figure and in manners. A slender, deli- 
cate, somewhat feeble young man, of fair al- 
though not finished education, who had always 
lived in good society, and showed it in his lan- 
guage and bearing, went down in the Bella, 
or at least disappeared with her; and thirteen 
years afterwards there came from Australia a 
man of enormous bulk, ignorant to an almost 
inconceivable degree of ignorance, and who, if he 
were Roger Tichborne, had not only forgotten 
all the manners of his class, but had forgotten 
the very names of many of those with whom he 



ought to have been most familiar, including the 
name of his own mother ; and this man pre- 
sented himself as the lost heir, and claimed the 
property. Yet it is certain that his story was 
believed by the mother of Roger Tichborne, and 
by a considerable number of persons of un- 
doubted veracity and intelligence who had known 
Roger Tichborne in his youth. He utterly 
failed to make out his claim in a Court of Law. 
It was shown upon the clearest evidence that he 
had gradually put together and built np around 
him a whole system of imposture. He was then 
put on trial for his frauds, found guilty, and sen- 
tenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. Yet 
thousands of ignorant persons, and some persons 
not at all ignorant, continued, and to this day 
continue, to believe in him. 

On January 9, 1873, Louis Napoleon, late 
Emperor of the French, died at his house in 
Chiselhurst, Kent. After the overthrow of the 
Empire the fallen Emperor came to England. 
He settled with his wife and son at Chiselhurst, 
and lived in dignified semi -retirement. The 
Emperor became a sort of favorite with the pub- 
lic here. A reaction seemed to have set in 
against the dread and dislike with which he had 
at one time been regarded. He enjoyed a cer- 
tain amount of popularity. Louis Napoleon had 
for a long time been in sinking health. His life 
had been overwrought in every way. He had 
lived many lives in a comparatively short space 
of time. Most of his friends had long been ex- 
pecting his death from week to week, almost 
from day to day. The event created no great 
sensation. Perhaps even the news of his death 
was but an anti-climax after the news of his fall. 
For twenty years he had filled a space in the 
eyes of the world with which the importance of 
no man else could pretend to compare. His 
political bulk had towered up in European af- 
fairs like some huge castle dominating over a 
city. All the earth listened to the lightest word 
he spoke. For good or evil, his influence and 
his name were potent in every corner of the 
globe. His nod convulsed continents. His arms 
glittered from the Crimea to Cochin-China, from 
Algeria to Mexico. The whole condition of 
things seemed changed when Louis Napoleon 
fell at Sedan. Some forty years of wandering, 
of obscurity, of futile, almost ludicrous enter- 
prises, of exile, of imprisonment, of the world's 
contempt, and then twenty years of splendid suc- 
cess, of supreme sovereignty, had led him to this 
— to the disgrace of Sedan, to the quiet fading 
days of Chiselhurst. 

Death was very busy about this time with men 
whose names had made deep mark on history or 
letters. Lord Lytton, the brilliant novelist, the 
successful dramatist, the composer of marvellous 
Parliamentary speeches, died on January 18, 
1873. Dr. Livingstone, the famous missionary 
and explorer, had hardly been discovered among 
the living by the enterprise and energy of Mr. 
Stanley, when the world learned that he was 
dead. So many false reports of his death had 
been sent about at different times that the state- 
ment now was received with incredulity. The 
truth had to be confirmed on testimony beyond 
dispute before England would accept the fact 
that the long career of devotion to the one pur- 
suit was over, and that Africa had had another 
victim. John Stuart Mill died on May 8, 1873, 
at his home at Avignon, where the tomb of his 
wife was made. "There's a great spirit gone," 
was the word of all men. A loftier and purer 
soul, more truly devoted to the quest of the truth, 
had not mingled in the worldly affairs of our 
time. His influence over the thought and the 
culture of his day was immense. Most of Mr. 
Mill's writings may safely be regarded as the 
possession of all the future, and he has left an 
example of candor in investigation and fearless 
moral purpose in action such as might well leaven 
even the most thoughtless and cynical generation. 
A sudden accident — the stumble of a horse — 
brought to a close, on July 19, the career of the 
Bishop of Winchester, the many-sided, energetic, 
eloquent Samuel Wilberforce. He had tried to 
succeed in everything, and he went near success. 
He tried to know everybody, and understand 
everybody's way of looking at every question. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



81 



lie was a great preacher and Parliamentary 
orator, a great bishop, a wit, a scholar, an ac- 
complished man of the world ; but he was a good 
man and good minister always. On the very 
day after the death of the Bishop of Winchester 
died Lord Westbury, who had been Lord Chan- 
cellor ; a man of great ability, unsurpassed as a 
lawyer in his time, endowed with as bitter a 
tongue and as vitriolic a wit as ever cursed their 
possessor. The deaths of Sir Edwin Landseer, 
the painter, Sir Henry Holland, the famous phy- 
sician and traveller, whose patients and personal 
friends were Emperors, Kings, Presidents, and 
Prime-ministers, and of Professor Sedgwick, the 
geologist, ought to be mentioned. Nor must we 
omit from our death-roll the name of Dr. Lush- 
ington, who, in addition to his own personal dis- 
tinction, is likely to be remembered as the deposi- 
tary of a secret confided to him in an earlier 
generation by Lady Byron — the secret of the 
charge she had to make against her husband. 
The whole story was revived before Dr. Lush- 
ington's death by a painful controversy, but he 
refused, even by a yes or no, to reveal Lady 
Byron's confidence. 

The year which saw so many deaths was a 
trying time for the Liberal Government. The 
novelty of the reforming administration was well- 
nigh worn off, and there was yet some work 
which Mr. Gladstone was pledged to do. Here 
and there, when it happened that the death or 
retirement of a member of Parliament gave an 
opportunity for a new election, it seemed of late 
to happen that the election went generally against 
the Government. The Conservatives were pluck- 
ing ap a spirit everywhere, and were looking 
closely after their organization. Mr. Disraeli 
himself had taken to going round the country, 
addressing great assemblages, and denouncing 
and ridiculing the Liberal Government. In one 
of his speeches Mr. Disraeli had spoken of a new 
difficulty in Irish politics and a new form of agita- 
tion that had arisen in Ireland. The Home Rule 
organization had sprung suddenly into existence. 

The Home Rule agitation came, in its first 
organized form, mainly from the inspiration of 
Irish Protestants. The disestablishment of the 
Church had filled most of the Protestants of Ire- 
land with hatred of Mr. Gladstone, and distrust 
of the Imperial Parliament and English parties. 
It was therefore thought by some of them that 
the time had come when Irishmen of all sects 
and parties had better trust to themselves and to 
their united efforts than to any English Minister, 
Parliament, or party. Partly in a petulant mood, 
partly in despondency, partly out of genuine pa- 
triotic impulse, some of the Irish Protestants 
set going the movement for Home Rule. But 
although the actual movement came into being 
in that way, the desire for a native Parliament 
had always lived among large classes of the Irish 
people. Attempts were always being made to 
construct something like a regular organization 
with such an object. The process of pacification 
was going on but slowly. It could only be slow 
in any case ; the effects of centuries of bad legis- 
lation could not by any human possibility be 
effaced by two or three years of better govern- 
ment. But there were many Irishmen who, 
themselves patient and moderate, saw with dis- 
tinctness that the feeling of disaffection, or at 
least of discontent, among theglrish people was 
not to be charmed away even by such measures 
as the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. 
They saw what English statesmen would not or 
could not see, that the one strong feeling in the 
breast of a large proportion of the population of 
Ireland was dislike to the rule of an English 
Parliament. The national sentiment, rightly or 
wrongly, for good or ill, had grown so powerful 
that it coidd not be overcome by mere concessions 
in this or that detail of legislation. These Irish- 
men of moderate views felt convinced that there 
were only two alternatives before England : either 
she must give back to Ireland some form of 
national Parliament, or she must go on putting 
down rebellion after rebellion, and dealing with 
Ireland as Russia had dealt with Poland. They 
therefore welcomed the Home Rule movement, 
and conscientiously believed that it would open 
the way to a genuine reconciliation between Eng- 



land and Ireland on conditions of fair copart- 
nership. 

Several Irish elections took place about the 
time when the Home Rule movement had been 
fairly started. They were fought out on the 
question for or against Home Rule, and the 
Home Rulers were successful. The leadership 
of the new party came into the hands of Mr. 
Butt, who returned to Parliament after a con- 
siderable time of exile from political life. Mr. 
Butt was a man of great ability, legal knowledge, 
and historical culture. He had begun life as 
a Conservative and an opponent of O'Connell. 
He had become one of the orators of the short- 
lived attempt at a Protectionist reaction in Eng- 
land. He was a lawyer of great skill and success 
in his profession ; as an advocate he had for 
years not a rival at the Irish bar. He had taken 
part in the defence of Smith O'Brien and Meagher 
at Clonmel, in 1848 ; and when the Fenian move- 
ments broke out, he undertook the defence of 
many Fenian prisoners. He became gradually 
drawn away from Conservatism and brought 
round to Nationalism. Mr. Butt dropped entirely 
out of public life for a while; and when he re- 
appeared it was as the leader of the new Home 
Rule movement. There was not then in Irish 
politics any man who could pretend to be his 
rival. He was a speaker at once powerful and 
plausible ; he had a thorough knowledge of the 
constitutional history and the technical proced- 
ures of Parliament, and he could talk to an Irish 
monster meeting with vivacity and energy. Al- 
most in a moment a regular Home Rule party 
was set up in the House of Commons. Popular 
Irish members who had been elected previous to 
the organization of the movement gave in their 
adhesion to it; and there was, in fact, a sudden 
revival of the constitutional movement for the 
satisfaction of Irish national claims, which had 
fallen asleep after the death of O'Connell and 
the failure of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848. 

The Home Rule movement unquestionably put 
Mr. Gladstone in a new difficulty. It was now 
certain that, when Parliament met, an organized 
Home Ride party woidd be found there ; and a 
good many strong Conservatives and weak Lib- 
erals were inclined to hold Mr. Gladstone's Irish 
policy responsible for the uprise of this new agi- 
tation. The prospects were on the whole grow- 
ing somewhat ominous for the Liberal Govern- 
ment. Not only the Conservative party were 
plucking up a spirit, but the House of Lords 
had more than once made it clear that they felt 
themselves emboldened to deal as they thought 
fit with measures sent up to them from the 
House of Commons. When the peers begin to 
be firm, and to assert their dignity, it may always 
be taken for granted there is not much popular 
force at the back of the Government. 

Parliament met on February 6, 1873. It is a 
remarkable illustration of the legislative energy 
with which the Government were even yet filled, 
that ou the very same night (February 13), at 
the very same hour, two great schemes of reform, 
reform that to slow and timid minds must have 
seemed something like revolution, were intro- 
duced into Parliament. One was the Irish 
University Education Bill, which Mr. Gladstone 
was explaining in the House of Commons ; the 
other was a measure to abolish the appellate ju- 
risdiction of the House of Lords, and establish a 
judicial Court of Appeal in its stead. This lat- 
ter measure was introduced by Lord Selborne, 
lately Sir Roundell Palmer, who had been raised 
to the office of Lord Chancellor, on the resigna- 
tion of Lord Hatherley, whose eyesight was tem- 
porarily affected. Great as the change was which 
Lord .Selborne proposed to introduce, public at- 
tention paid comparatively little heed to it at that 
moment. Every one watched with eager interest 
the development of Mr. Gladstone's most critical 
scheme for the improvement of university educa- 
tion in Ireland. Irish university education was 
indeed in a very anomalous condition. Ireland 
had two universities : that of Dublin, which was 
then a distinctly Protestant institution : and the 
Queen's University, which was established mi a 
Strictly secular system, and which the heads of 
the Catholic Church had on that account con- 
demned. The Catholics asked for a chartered 



Catholic university. The answer made by most 
Englishmen was, that to grant a charter to a 
Catholic university would be to run the risk of 
lowering the national standard of education, and 
that to grant any State aid to a Catholic univer- 
sity would be to endow a sectarian institution out 
of the public funds. The Catholic made rejoin- 
der that a mere speculative dread of lowering 
the common standard of university education 
was hardly a reason why five-sixths of the pop- 
ulation of Ireland should have no university ed- 
ucation of that kind at all ; that the University 
of Dublin was in essence a State-endowed insti- 
tution ; and that the Queen's University was 
founded by State money, on a principle which 
excluded the vast majority of Catholics from its 
advantages. 

Mr. Gladstone's measure was a gallant and 
a well-meant effort to reconcile the conflicting 
claims. Mr. Gladstone proposed to establish in 
Ireland one central university, the University of 
Dublin, to which existing colleges, and colleges 
to exist hereafter, might affiliate themselves, and 
in the governing of which they would have a 
share, while each college would make what laws 
it pleased for its own constitution, and might be 
denominational or undenominational as it thought 
fit. The Legislature would give an open career 
and fair play to all alike; and in order to make 
the University equally applicable to every sect, 
it would not teach disputed branches of knowl- 
edge, or allow its examinations for prizes to in- 
clude any of the disputed questions. The col- 
leges could act for themselves with regard to the 
teaching of theology, moral philosophy, and mod- 
ern history; the central University would main- 
tain a neutral ground so far as these subjects 
were concerned, and would have nothing to do 
with them. This scheme looked plausible and 
even satisfactory for a moment. It was met 
that first night with something like a chorus of 
approval from those who spoke. But there was 
an ominous silence in many parts of the House, 
and 'after a while the ominous silence began to 
be very alarmingly broken. The more the scheme 
was examined the less it seemed to find favor on 
either side of the House. It proposed to break 
up and fuse together three or four existing sys- 
tems, and apparently without the least prospect 
of satisfying any of the various sects and parties 
to compose whose strife this great revolution was 
to be attempted. There was great justice in the 
complaint that soon began to be heard from both 
sides of the House of Commons : " You are spoil- 
ing several institutions, and you are not satisfying 
the requirements of anybody whatever." 

The agitation against the bill grew and grew. 
The late Professor Cairnes, then in fast failing 
health, inspired and guided much of that part of 
the opposition which condemned the measure be- 
cause of the depreciating effect it would have on 
the character of the higher education of Ireland. 
The English Non-conformists were all against it. 
The Conservatives were against it, and it soon be- 
came evident that the Irish members of Parlia- 
ment would vote as a body against it. The cri- 
sis came on an amendment to the motion for the 
second reading. The amendment was moved on 
Mai eh :'. by Mr. Bourke, brother of the late Lord 
Mayo. The debate, which lasted four nights, 
was brilliant and impassioned. Mr. Disraeli was 
exulting, and his exultation lent even more than 
usual spirit to his glittering eloquence as he 
taunted Mr. Gladstone with having mistaken 
'' the clamor of the Non-conformist for the voice 
of the nation," and declared his belief that the 
English people were weary of the policy of con- 
fiscation. 

When Mr. Gladstone rose to speak at the close 
of the fourth night's debate it soon became evi- 
dent thai lie no longer counted on victory. How, 
indeed, could he? He was opposed and assailed 
from all sides, lie knew that the Senate of the 
University of Dublin had condemned his meas- 
ure as well as the Roman Catholic prelates. He 
had received a deputation of Irish members to 
announce to him frankly that they could not 
support him. His speech was in remarkable 
contrast to the jubilant tones of Mr. Disraeli's 
defiant and triumphant rhetoric. It was full of 
dignity and resolve ; but it was the dignity of 



82 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



anticipated defeat, met without shrinking and 
without bravado. A few sentences, in which 
Mr. Gladstone spoke of his severance from the 
Irish representatives with whom he had worked 
cordially and successfully on the Church and 
Land Bills, were full of a genuine and a noble 
pathos. Mr. Gladstone was the first English 
Prime-minister who had ever really perilled of- 
fice and popularity to serve the interests of Ire- 
land ; it seemed a cruel stroke of fate which made 
his fall from power mainly the result of the Irish 
vote in the House of Commons. The result of 
the division was waited with breathless anxiety. 
It was what had been expected. The Ministry 
had been defeated by a small majority ; 287 had 
voted against the second reading, 2S4 voted for 
it. By a majority of three the great Liberal ad- 
ministration was practically overthrown. 

The Ministry did not indeed come to an end 
just then. Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues re- 
signed office, and the Queen sent for Mr. Dis- 
raeli. But Mr. Disraeli prudently declined to 
accept office with the existing House of Com- 
mons. He had been carefully studying the evi- 
dences of Conservative reaction, and he felt sure 
that the time for his party was coming. He had 
had bitter experience of the humiliation of a min- 
ister who tries to govern without a majority in 
the House of Commons. He could, of course, 
form a government, he said, and dissolve in May ; 
but then he had nothing in particular to dissolve 
about. The situation was curious. There were 
two great statesmen disputing, not for office, but 
how to get out of the responsibility of office. The 
result was that Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues 
had to return to their places and go on as best 
they could. There was nothing else to be done. 
Mr. Disraeli would not accept responsibility just 
then, and with regard to the interests of his par- 
ty he was acting like a prudent man. Mr. Glad- 
stone returned to office. He returned reluctantly ; 
he was weary of the work ; he was disappointed ; 
he had suffered in health from the incessant ad- 
ministrative labor to which he had always sub- 
jected himself with an unsparing and almost im- 
provident magnanimity. He must have known 
that, coming back to office under such conditions, 
he would find his power shaken, his influence 
much discredited. He bent to the necessities of 
the time, and consented to be Prime-minister 
still. He helped Mr. Fawcett to carry a bill for 
the abolition of tests in Dublin University, as he 
could do no more just then for university educa- 
tion in Ireland. 

The end was near. During the autumn some 
elections, happening incidentally, turned out 
against the Liberal party. The Conservatives 
were beginning to be openly triumphant in most 
places. Mr. Gladstone made some modifications 
in his Ministry. Mr. Lowe gave up the Chan- 
cellorship of the Exchequer, in which he had 
been singularly unsuccessful. Mr. Bruce left 
the Home Office, in which he had not been much 
of a success. Mr. Gladstone took upon himself 
the offices of First Lord of the Treasury and 
Chancellor of the Exchequer together, following 
an example set in former days by Peel and other 
statesmen. Mr. Lowe became Home Secretary. 
Mr. Bruce was raised to the peerage as Lord 
Aberdare, and was made President of the Coun- 
cil in the room of the Marquis of Ripon, who 
had resigned. Mr. Childers resigned the office 
of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and 
Mr. Bright, whose health had now been restored, 
came back to the Cabinet in charge of the mere- 
ly nominal business of the Duchy. There could 
be no doubt that there were dissensions in the 
Ministry. Mr. Baxter had resigned the office of 
Secretary of the Treasury on the ground that he 
could not get on with Mr. Lowe, who had not 
consulted him with regard to certain contracts, 
and had refused to take his advice. The gener- 
al impression was that Mr. Childers gave up the 
Chancellorship of the Duchy because he consid- 
ered that he had claims on the office of Chancel- 
lor of the Exchequer, which Mr. Gladstone now 
had taken to himself. These various changes, 
and the rumors to which they gave birth, were 
not calculated to strengthen the public confi- 
dence. In truth, the Liberal regime was falling 
to pieces. 



But it was Mr. Gladstone himself who dealt 
the stroke which brought the Liberal Adminis- 
tration to an end. In the closing days of 1873 
the Conservatives won a seat at Exeter ; in the 
first few days of lS7i they won a seat at Stroud. 
Parliament had actually been summoned for 
February 5. Suddenly, on January 23, Mr. 
Gladstone made up his mind to dissolve Parlia- 
ment, and seek for a restoration of the authority 
of the Liberal Government by an appeal to the 
people. The country was taken utterly by sur- 
prise. Many of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues 
had not known what was to be done until the 
announcement was actually made. The feeling 
all over the three kingdoms was one of almost 
unanimous disapproval. Mr. Gladstone's sud- 
den resolve was openly condemned as petulant 
and unstatesmanlike ; it was privately grumbled 
at on various personal grounds. Mr. Gladstone 
had surprised the constituencies. We do not 
know whether the constituencies surprised Mr. 
Gladstone. They certainly surprised most per- 
sons, including themselves. The result of the 
elections was to upset completely the balance of 
power. In a few days the Liberal majority was 
gone. When the result of the polls came to be 
made up it was found that the Conservatives had 
a majority of about fifty, even on the calculation, 
far too favorable to the other side, which count- 
ed every Home Ruler as a Liberal. Mr. Glad- 
stone followed the example set by Mr. Disraeli 
six years before, and at once resigned his office. 
The great reforming Liberal Administration was 
gone. The organizing energy which had ac- 
complished such marvels during three or four re- 
splendent years had spent itself and was out of 
breath. The English constituencies had grown 
weary of the heroic, and would have a change. 
So sudden a fall from power had not up to that 
time been known in the modern political history 
of the country. 

Had the Liberal Ministers consented to remain 
in power a few days — a very few — longer, they 
would have been able to announce the satisfac- 
tory conclusion of a very unsatisfactory war. 
The Ashantee war arose out of a sort of misun- 
derstanding. The Ashantees are a very fierce 
and warlike tribe on the Gold Coast of Africa. 
They were at war with England in 1824, and in 
one instance they won an extraordinary victory 
over a British force of about 1000 men, and 
carried home with them as a trophy the skull of 
the British Commander-in-chief, Sir Charles 
M'Carthy. They were afterwards defeated, and 
a treaty of peace was concluded with them. In 
1863 a war was begun against the Ashantees 
prematurely and rashly by the Governor of the 
Gold Coast Settlements, and it had to be aban- 
doned owing to the ravages done by sickness 
among our men. In 1872 some Dutch posses- 
sions on the Gold Coast were transferred by pur- 
chase and arrangement of other kinds to Eng- 
land. The King of Ashantee claimed a tribute 
formally allowed to him by the Dutch, and re- 
fused to evacuate the territory ceded to England. 
He attacked the Fantees, a tribe of very worth- 
less allies of ours, and a straggling, harassing 
war began between him and our garrisons. The 
great danger was that if the Ashantees obtained 
any considerable success, or seeming success, 
even for a moment, all the surrounding tribes 
would make common cause with them. Sir 
Garnet Wolseley, who had commanded the suc- 
cessful expedition to the Red River region in 
1870, was sent out to Ashantee. He had a very 
hard task to perform. Of course he could have 
no difficulty in fighting the Ashantees. The 
weapons and the discipline of the English army 
put all thoughts of serious battle out of the ques- 
tion. But the whole campaign had to be over 
and done within the limited range of the cooler 
months, or the heat would bring pestilence and 
fever into the field to do battle for the African 
King. Sir Garnet Wolseley and those who 
fought under him — sailors, marines, and soldiers 
— did their work well. They defeated the Ashan- 
tees wherever they could get at them ; they 
forced their way to Coomassie, compelled the 
King to come to terms, one of the conditions be- 
ing the prohibition of human sacrifices, and they 
were able to leave the country within the ap- 



pointed time. The success of the campaign was 
a question of days and almost of hours ; and the 
victory was snatched out of the very jaws of ap- 
proaching sun and fever. Sir Garnet Wolseley 
sailed from England on September 12, 1873, and 
returned to Portsmouth, having accomplished all 
his objects, on March 21, 1874. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

LORD ISEACONSFIELD. 

Mr. Disraeli was not long in forming a 
Ministry. Lord Cairns became Lord Chancel- 
lor. Lord Derby was made Foreign Secretary, 
an appointment which gratified sober-minded 
men. Lord Salisbury was intrusted with the 
charge of the Indian Department. This too 
was an appointment which gave satisfaction out- 
side the range of the Conservative party as well 
as within it. During his former administration 
of the India Office Lord Salisbury had shown 
great ability and self-command, and he had ac- 
quired a reputation for firmness of character 
and large and liberal views. He was now, and 
for some time after, looked upon as the most 
rising man and the most high-minded politician 
on the Conservative side. The country was 
pleased to see that Mr. Disraeli made no account 
of the dislike that Lord Salisbury had evidently 
felt towards him at one time, and of the manner 
in which he had broken away from the Conserv- 
ative Ministry at the time of the Reform Bill 
of 18G7. Lord Carnarvon became Colonial 
Secretary. Mr. Cross, a Lancashire lawyer, who 
had never been in office of any kind before, was 
lifted into the position of Home Secretary. 
Mr. Gathorne Hardy was made Secretary for 
War, and Mr. Ward Hunt First Lord of the 
Admiralty. Sir Stafford Northeote, who had 
been trained to finance by Mr. Gladstone, ac- 
cepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
The Duke of Richmond, as Lord President of 
the Council, made a safe, inoffensive, and respect- 
able leader of the Government in the House of 
Lords. 

The Liberals seemed to have received a stun- 
ning blow. The whole party reeled under it, 
and did not appear capable for the moment of 
rallying against the shock. To accumulate the 
difficulties, Mr. Gladstone suddenly announced 
his intention of retiring from the position of 
leader of the Liberal party. This seemed the 
one step needed to complete the disorganization 
of the party. The Opposition were for a while 
apparently not only without a leader but even 
without a policy, or a motive for existence. The 
Ministry had succeeded to a handsome surplus 
of nearly six millions. It would be hardly pos- 
sible under such circumstances to bring in a bud- 
get which should be wholly unsatisfactory. Mr. 
Ward Hunt contrived, indeed, to get up a mo- 
mentary scare about the condition of the navy. 
When introducing the Navy Estimates he talked 
in tones of ominous warning about his determi- 
nation not to have a fleet on paper, or to put up 
with phantom ships. The words sent a wild 
thrill of alarm through the country. The sud- 
den impression prevailed that Mr. Hunt had 
made a fearful discovery — had found out that 
the country had really no navy ; that he would 
be compelled to set about constructing one out 
of hand. Mr.»Ward Hunt, however, when 
pressed for an explanation, explained that he 
really meant nothing. It appeared that he had 
only been expressing his disapproval on abstract 
grounds of the maintenance of inefficient navies, 
and never meant to convey the idea that Eng- 
land's navy was not efficient, and the country 
breathed again. 

Two new measures belonging to the same or- 
der disturbed for a while the calm which pre- 
vailed in Parliament now that the Conservatives 
had it all their own way, and the Liberals were 
crushed. One was the Bill for the abolition 
of Church Patronage in Scotland; the other, 
the Public Worship Bill for England. The 
Church Patronage Bill, which was introduced 
by the Government, took away the appoint- 
ment of ministers in the Church of Scotland 
from lay patrons, and gave it to the congre- 
gation of the parish church, a congregation to 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



83 



consist of the communicants and "such other 
adherents" as the Kirk Session, acting under the 
control of the General Assembly, might deter- 
mine to allow. Such a measure might have 
prevented the great secession from the Church 
of Scotland under Dr. Chalmers in 1S4:1; but 
it was useless for any purpose of reconciliation in 
1874. Its introduction became of some present 



discussions were remarkable for the divisions of 
opinion they showed on both sides of the House. 
Lord Salisbury opposed the Bill in the House of 
Lords; Mr. Hardy condemned it in the House 
of Commons. It was condemned as too weak ; 
it was denounced as too strong. Mr. Gladstone 
came forward with all the energy of his best 
days to oppose it, on the ground that it threat- 



interest to the House of Commons, because it ened to deprive the Church of all her spiritual 
drew Mr. Gladstone into debate for the first freedom merely to get a more easy way of deal- 
time since the opening nights of the session, ing with the practices of a few eccentric men. 
He opposed the Bill, but of course in vain. Mr. ! Sir William llarcourt, who had been Solicitor- 
Disraeli complimented him on his reappearance, j General under Mr. Gladstone, rushed to the de- 
and kindly expressed a hope that he would fa- j fence of the bill, attacked Mr. Gladstone vehe- 
vor the House with his presence as often as pos- J mently, called upon Mr. Disraeli to prove bim- 
sible; indeed, was quite friendly and patroniz- self the leader of the English people, and in im- 



ing to his fallen rival. 

The Bill for the Regulation of Public Worship 
was not a Government measure. It was intro- 
duced into the House of Lords by the Archbish- 
op of Canterbury, and into the House of Com- 
mons by Mr. Russell Gurney. It was strongly 
disliked and publicly condemned by some mem- 
bers of the Cabinet ; but after it had gone its 
way fairly towards success Mr. Disraeli showed 



passioned sentences reminded him that he had 
put his hand to the plough and must not draw it 
back. air. Gladstone dealt with his late subor- 
dinate in a few sentences of good-humored con- 
tempt, in which he expressed his special surprise 
at the sudden and portentous display of erudi- 
tion which Sir William llarcourt had poured out 
upon the House. Sir William Harcourt was 
even then a distinctly rising man. He was an 



a disposition to adopt it, and even to speak as if j effective and somewhat overbearing speaker, with 
he had had the responsibility of it from the first. | a special aptitude for the kind of elementary ar- 
The bill illustrated a curious difficulty into which gument and the knock-down personalities which 
the Church of England had been brought, in con- i the House of Commons can never fail to under- 
sequence partly of its connection with the State. | stand. The House liked to listen to him. He 
The influence of the Oxford movement had set had a loud voice, and never gave his hearers 
thought stirring everywhere within the Church, the trouble of having to strain their ears or their 
It appealed to much that was philosophical, ! attention to follow him. His arguments were 
much that was artistic and esthetic, and at the I never subtle enough to puzzle the simplest coun- 
same time to much that was sceptical. One | try gentleman for one moment. His quotations 
body of Churchmen, the Tractarians as they I had no distracting novelty about them, but fell 
were called, were anxious to maintain the unity | on the ear with a familiar and friendly sound. 
of the Christian Church, and would not admit His jokes were unmistakable in their meaning: 



that the Church of England began to exist with 
the Reformation. They claimed apostolical suc- 
cession for their bishops ; they declared that the 
clergymen of the Church of England were priests 
in the true spiritual sense. The Evangelicals 
maintained that the Bible was the sole authori- 
ty ; the Tractarians held that the New Testa- 
ment derived its authority from the Church. The 
Tractarians therefore claimed a right to examine 
very freely into the meaning of doubtful passages 
in the Scriptures, and insisted that if the author- 
ity of the Church were recognized as that of the 
Heaven-appointed interpreter, all difficulty about 
the reconciliation of the scriptural writings with 
the discoveries of modern science would necessa- 
rily disappear. The Tractarian party became 
divided into two sections. One section inclined 
towards what may almost be called free thought ; 
the other, to the sentiments and the ceremonies 
of the Roman Catholic Church. The astonished 
Evangelicals saw with dismay that the Church 
as they knew it seemed likely to be torn asunder. 
The Evangelicals had their strongest supporters 
among the middle and the lower-middle classes ; 
the others found favor at once among the rich, 
who went in for culture, and among the very 
poor. The law, which was often invoked, proved 
impotent to deal with the difficulty. It was 
found impossible to put down Ritualism by law. 



his whole style was good strong black and white. 
He could get up a case admirably. He aston- 
ished the House and must probably even have 
astonished himself, by the vast amount of eccle- 
siastical knowledge, which with only the prepa- 
ration of a day or two he was able to bring to 
bear upon the most abstruse or perplexed ques- 
tions of Church government. He had the ad- 
vantage of being sure of everything. He poured 
out his eloquence and his learning on the most 
difficult ecclesiastical questions with the resolute 
assurance of one who had given a life to the 
study. -Perhaps we ought rather to say that he 
showed the resolute assurance which only be- 
longs to one who has not given much of his life 
to the study of the subject. Mr. Disraeli re- 
sponded so far to Sir William Harcourt's stir- 
ring appeal as to make himself the patron of the 
bill and the leader of the movement in its favor. 
Mr. Disraeli saw that by far the greater body 
of English public opinion out-of-doors was 
against the Ritualists, and that for the moment 
public opinion accepted the whole controversy 
as a dispute for or against Ritualism. The 
course taken by the Prime-minister further en- 
livened the debates by bringing about a keen 
little passage of arms between him and Lord 
Salisbury, whom Mr. Disraeli described as a 
great master of jibes and flouts and jeers. The 



The law was not by any means so clear as some ' bill was passed in both Houses of Parliament, 
of the opponents of Ritualism would have wished and obtained the Royal assent almost at the end 
it. Moreover, even in cases where a distinct of the session. 



condemnation was obtained from a court of law 
there was often no way of putting it into execu- 
tion. In more than one case a clergyman was 
actually deposed by authority, and his successor 
appointed. The congregation held fast by the 
delinquent and would not admit the new man. 
The offender remained at his post just as if noth- 
ing had happened. It was clear that if all this 
went on much longer, the Establishment must 



A measure for the protection of seamen 
against the danger of being sent to sea in ves- 
sels unfit for the voyage was forced upon the 
Government by Mr. Plimsoll. Mr. Plimsollwas 
a man who had pushed his way through life by 
ability and hard work into independence and 
wealth. He was full of human sympathy, and 
was especially interested in the welfare of the 
poor. Mr. Plimsoll's attention happened to be 



come to an end. One party would renounce I turned to the condition of our merchant seamen, 

State control in order to get freedom ; another and he found that the state of the law loft them 
would repudiate State control because it proved , almost absolutely at the mercy of unscrupulous 
unable to maintain authority. and selfish ship-owners. It was easy to insure 

To remedy all this disorder, the Archbishop a vessel, and once insured it mattered little to 
of Canterbury brought in his bill. Its object was such a ship-owner how soon she went to the bot- 
to give offended parishioners a ready way of in- torn. The law gave to magistrates the power 
voking the authority of the bishop, and to enable of sending to prison the seaman who for any 
the bishop to prohibit by his own mandate any : reason refused to fulfil his contract and go to 
practices which he considered improper, or else | sea. The criminal law bore upon him ; only 
to submit the question to the decision of a judge | the civil law applied to the employer. Mr. 
specially appointed to decide in such cases. The j Plimsoll actually found cases of seamen sen- 



tenced to prison because they refused to sail in 
erazj slops, which, when they put to sea, never 
touched a port but went down in mid-ocean. 
Letters were found in the pockets of drowned 
seamen which showed that they had made their 
friends aware of their forebodings as to the con- 
dition of the vessel that was to be their coffin. 
Mr. Plimsoll began a regular crusade against 
certain ship-owners. He published a hook called 
" Our Seamen, an Appeal," in which he made 
the most startling and, it must be added, the 
most sweeping, charges. Courts of law were 
invoked to deal with his assertions ; the author- 
ity of Parliament was called on to protect ship- 
owning members against the violence of the 
irrepressible philanthropist. Mr. Plimsoll was 
clearly wrong in some of his charges against in- 
dividuals, but a very general opinion prevailed 
that he was only too just in his condemnation 
of the system. Mr. Plimsoll brought in a bill 
for the better protection of the lives of seamen. 
It proposed a compulsory survey of all ships 
before leaving port, various precautions against 
overloading, the restriction of deck-loading, and 
the compulsory painting of a load line, the posi- 
tion of which was to be determined by legisla- 
tion. This measure was strongly opposed by 
the ship-owners in the House, and by many oth- 
ers as well as they, who regarded it as too 
stringent, and who also feared that by putting 
too much responsibility on the Government it 
would take all responsibility off the ship-owners. 
The bill came to the test of division on June 
24, 1874, and was rejected by a majority of 
only three, 170 voting for it and 173 against. 
The Government then recognizing the impor- 
tance of the subject, and the strong feeling which 
prevailed in the country with regard to it, intro- 
duced a Merchant Shipping Bill of their own 
in the season of 1875. It did not go nearly so 
far as Mr. Plimsoll would have desired, but it 
did promise to be at least part of a series of 
legislation which, further developed, might have 
accomplished the object. Such as it was, how- 
ever, the Government did not press it, and to- 
wards the end of July Mr. Disraeli announced 
that they would not go further that year with 
the measure. 

The 22d of July saw one of the most extra- 
ordinary scenes that ever took place in the 
House of Commons. Mr. Plimsoll, under the 
influence of disappointment and of anger, seemed 
to have lost all self-control. He denounced some 
of the ship-owners of that House; he threatened 
to name and expose them ; he called them vil- 
lains who had sent brave men to death. When 
interrupted by the Speaker, and told that he must 
not apply the term villains to members of the 
House, he repeated again and again, and in the 
most vociferous tones, that they were villains, 
and that he would abide by his words. He re- 
fused to recognize the authority of the Speaker. 
He shouted, shook his fist at the leading mem- 
bers of the Government, and rushed out of the 
House in a state of wild excitement. Thereupon 
Mr. Disraeli moved " that the Speaker do rep- 
rimand Mr. Plimsoll for his disorderly behavior." 
Mr. A. M. Sullivan, one of the Home Rule Mem- 
bers, returned for the first time at the general 
election, a man of remarkable eloquence and of 
high character, interposed on behalf of Mr. Plim- 
soll. He pleaded that Mr. Plimsoll was seriously 
ill and hardly able to account for his actions, 
owing to mental excitement arising from an over- 
wrought system, and from the intensity of his 
zeal in the cause of the merchant seamen. He 
asked that a week should be given Mr. Plimsoll 
to consider bis position. Mr. Fawcett and other 
members made a similar appeal, and the Govern- 
ment consented to postpone a decision of the 
question for a week. Mr. Plimsoll had offended 
against the rules, the traditions, and the dignity 
of the House, and many even of those who sym- 
pathized with his general purpose thought he 
had damaged his cause and ruined his individual 
position. Nothing, however, could be more ex- 
traordinary and unexpected than the result. It 
was one of those occasions in which the public 
out-of-doors showed that they could get to the 
eal heart of a question more quickly and more 
clearly than Parliament itself. Out-of-doors it 



8+ 

was thoroughly understood that Mr. Plimsoll 
was too sweeping in his charges ; that he was 
entirely mistaken in some of them ; that he had 
denounced men who did not deserve denun- 
ciation ; that his behavior in the House of Com- 
mons was a gross offence against order. But 
the difference between the public and the House 
of Commons was, that while understanding and 
admitting all this, the public clearly saw that as 
to the main question at issue Mr. Plimsoll was 
entirely in the right. The country was there- 
fore determined to stand by him. 

Great meetings were held all over Eugland 
during the next few days, at every one of which 
those who were present pledged themselves to 
assist Mr. Plimsoll in his general object and pol- 
icy. The result was that when Mr. Plimsoll 
appeared in the House of Commons the week 
after, and in a very full and handsome manner 
made apology for his offences against Parlia- 
mentary order, it was apparent to every one in 
the House and out of it that he was master of 
the situation, and that the Government would 
have to advance with more or less rapid strides 
along the path where he was leading. Finally, 
the Government brought in, and forcibly pushed 
through, a Merchant Shipping Bill, which met 
for the moment some of the difficulties of the 
case. The Government afterwards promised to 
supplement it by legislation, regulating in some 
way the system of maritime insurances. Other 
things, however, interfered with the carrying out 
of the Government proposals, and the regulation 
of maritime insurance was forgotten. 

The Government seemed for a while inclined 
to keep plodding steadily on with quiet schemes 
of domestic legislation. They tinkered at a 
measure for the security of improvements made 
by agricultural tenants. They made it purely 
permissive, and therefore thoroughly worthless. 
This one defect tainted many of their schemes 
of domestic reform — this inclination to make 
every reform permissive. It seemed to be thought 
a clever stroke of management to introduce a 
measure professedly for the removal of some in- 
equality or other grievance, and then to make it 
permissive and allow all parties concerned to 
contract themselves out of it. Mr. Cross, the 
Home Secretary, however, proved a very efficient 
Minister, and introduced many useful schemes 
of legislation, among the rest an Artisan's 
Dwelling Bill, the object of which was to enable 
local authorities to pull down houses unfit for 
human habitation and rebuild on the sites. 
The Government made experiments in reaction 
here and there. They restored the appellate 
jurisdiction of the House of Lords, which had 
seemed actually doomed. They got into some 
trouble by issuing a circular to captains of war 
vessels on the subject of the reception of slaves 
on board their ships. The principle which the 
circular laid down was in substance a full recog- 
nition of the rights of a slave -owner over a 
fugitive slave. The country rose in indignation 
against this monstrous reversal of England's 
time-honored policy ; and the circular was with- 
drawn and a new one issued. This, too, proved 
unsatisfactory. It was impossible for the Gov- 
ernment to resist the popular demand; some of 
their own men in the House of Commons fell 
away from them, and insisted that the old prin- 
ciple must be kept up, and that the slave-owner 
shall not take his slave from under the shadow of 
the English flag. 

All this time Mr. Gladstone had withdrawn 
from the paths of Parliamentary life and had 
taken to polemical literature. He was stirring 
up a heated controversy with Cardinal Manning, 
Dr. Newman, and other great controversialists, 
by endeavoring to prove that absolute obedience 
to the Catholic Church was henceforward in- 
consistent with the principles of freedom, and 
that the doctrine of papal infallibility was every- 
where the enemy of liberty. Grave politicians 
were not a little scandalized at the position taken 
by a statesman who only the other day was 
Prime-minister. It seemed clear that Mr. Glad- 
stone never meant to take any leading part in 
politics again. Surely, it was said, if he had the 
remotest idea of entering the political field anew, 
he never would have thus gratuitously given of- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



fence to the Roman Catholic subjects of the 
Queen and to all the Catholic Sovereigns and 
Ministers of Europe. Most of his friends shook 
their heads ; most of his enemies were delighted. 
There was some difficulty at first about the 
choice of a successor to Mr. Gladstone. Two 
men stood intellectually high above all other 
possible competitors — Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe. 
But it was well known that Mr. Bright's health 
would not allow him to undertake such laborious 
duties, and Mr. Lowe was universally assumed 
to have none of the leader's qualities. Sir Will- 
iam Harcourt had not yet weight enough ; nei- 
ther had Mr. Goschen. The real choice was be- 
tween Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. Mr. 
Forster, however, knew that he had estranged 
the Non-conformists from him by the course he 
had taken in his education measures, and he 
withdrew from what he thought an untenable po- 
sition. Lord Hartington was therefore arrived 
at by a sort of process of exhaustion. He 
proved much better than his promise. He had 
a robust, straightforward nature, and by con- 
stant practice he made himself an effective de- 
bater. Men liked the courage and the candid 
admission of his own deficiencies, with which he 
braced himself up to his most difficult task — 
to take the place of Gladstone in debate and to 
confront Disraeli. 

A change soon came over the spirit of the 
Administration. It began to be seen more and 
more clearly that Mr. Disraeli had not come into 
office merely to consider prosaic measures of do- 
mestic legislation. His inclinations were all for 
the broader and more brilliant fields of foreign 
politics. The marked contrast between the po- 
litical aptitudes and tastes of Mr. Disraeli and 
Mr. Gladstone came in to influence still further 
the difference between the policy of the new Gov- 
ernment and that of its predecessor. Mr. Glad- 
stone delighted in the actual work and business 
of administration. Now, Mr. Disraeli had nei- 
ther taste nor aptitude for the details of admin- 
istration. He enjoyed administration on the j 
large scale ; he loved political debate ; he liked 
to make a great speech. But when he was not 
engaged in his favorite work he preferred to be 
doing nothing. It was natural therefore that 
Mr. Gladstone's Administration should be one 
of practical work; that it should introduce Bills 
to deal with perplexed and complicated griev- 
ances ; that it should take care to keep the 
finances of the country in good condition. Mr. 
Disraeli had no personal interest in such things. 
He loved to feed his mind on gorgeous, imperial 
fancies. It pleased him to think that England 
was, what he would persist in calling her, an 
Asiatic power, and that he was administering 
the affairs of a great Oriental Empire. Mr. 
Disraeli had never until now had an opportunity 
of showing what his own style of statesmanship 
would be. He had always been in office only, 
but not in power. Now he had for the first 
time a strong majority behind him. He could 
do as he liked. He had the full confidence of 
the Sovereign. His party were now wholly de- 
voted to him. They began to regard him as 
infallible. Even those who detested still feared ; 
men believed in his power none the less because 
they had no faith in his policy. In the House 
of Commons he had no longer any rival to dread 
in debate. Mr. Gladstone had withdrawn from 
the active business of politics ; Mr. Bright was 
not strong enough in physical health to care 
much for controversy ; there was no one else 
who could by any possibility be regarded as a 
proper adversary for Mr. Disraeli. The new 
Prime -minister, therefore, had everything his 
own way. He soon showed what sort of states- 
manship he liked best. In politics as in art the 
weaknesses of the master of a school are most 
clearly seen in the performances of his imitators 
and admirers. A distinguished member of Mr. 
Disraeli's Cabinet proclaimed that since the Con- 
servatives came into office there had been some- 
thing stirring in the very air which spoke of 
imperial enterprise. The Elizabethan days were 
to be restored, it was proudly declared. Eng- 
land was to resume her high place among the 
nations. She was to make her influence felt all 
over the world, but more especially on the Eu- 



ropean continent. The Cabinets and Chancel- 
leries of Europe were to learn that nothing was 
to be done any more without the authority of 
England. "A spirited foreign policy ''was to 
be inaugurated, a new era was to begin. 

Perhaps the first indication of the new foreign 
policy w : as given by the purchase of the shares 
which the Khedive of Egypt held in the Suez 
Canal. The Khedive of Egypt held nearly half 
the 400,000 original shares in the Canal, and 
the Khedive was" going every day faster and 
faster on the road to ruin. He was on the brink 
of bankruptcy. His 176,000 shares came into 
the market; and on November 25, 1875, the 
world was astonished by the news that the Eng- 
lish Government had turned stock-jobber and 
bought them for four millions sterling. The idea 
was not the Government's own. The editor of 
a London evening paper, Mr. Frederick Green- 
wood, was the man to whom the thought first 
occurred. He made it known to the Prime- 
minister, and Mr. Disraeli was caught by the 
proposition, and the shares were instantly bought 
up in the name of the English Government. 
Seldom in our time has any act on the part of 
a Government been received with such general 
approbation. The London newspapers broke 
into a chorus of applause. The London clubs 
were delighted. The air rang with praises of 
the courage and spirit shown by the Ministry. 
If here and there a faint voice was raised to sug- 
gest that the purchase was a foolish proceeding, 
that it was useless, that it was undignified, a 
shout of offended patriotism drowned the ignoble 
remonstrance. The act is of historical impor- 
tance as the first of a series of strokes made by 
the Government in foreign policy, each of which 
came in the nature of a surprise to Parliament 
and the country. It is probable that Mr. Dis- 
raeli counted upon making his Government pop- 
ular by affording to the public at intervals the 
exciting luxury of a new sensation. The public 
were undoubtedly rather tired of having been so 
long quiet and prosperous. They liked to know 
that their Government was doing something. 
Mr. Disraeli led the fashion, and stimulated the 
public taste. The Government tried to establish 
a South African Confederation, and sent out Mr. 
Froude, the romantic historian, to act as the rep- 
resentative of their policy. The Government 
made some changes in the relations of the India 
Office here to the Viceroy in Calcutta, which 
gave much greater power into the hands of the 
Secretary for India. One immediate result of 
this was the retirement of Lord Northbrook, a 
prudent and able man, before the term of his ad- 
ministration had actually arrived. Mr. Disraeli 
gave the country another little surprise. He ap- 
pointed Lord Lytton Viceroy of India. Lord 
Lytton had been previously known chiefly as the 
writer of pretty and sensuous verse, and the au- 
thor of one or two showy and feeble novels. 
The world was a good deal astonished at the ap- 
pointment of such a man to an office which had 
strained the intellectual energies of men like Dal- 
housie and Canning and Elgin. But people were 
in general willing to believe that Mr. Disraeli 
knew Lord Lytton to be possessed of a gift of 
administration which the world outside had not 
any chance of discerning in him. There was 
something, too, which gratified many persons in 
the appointment. It seemed gracious and kindly 
of Mr. Disraeli thus to recognize and exalt the 
son of his old friend and companion in arms. 
There was a feeling all over England which 
wished well to the appointment, and sincerely 
hoped it might prove a success. 

Another little sensation was created by the in- 
vention of a new title for the Queen. At the 
beginning of the Session of 1870 Mr. Disraeli 
announced that the Queen was to be called 
"Empress of India." A strong dislike was felt 
to this superfluous and tawdry addition to the 
ancient style of the sovereigns of England. 
The educated feeling of the country rose in re- 
volt against this preposterous innovation. Some 
of the debates in the House of Commons were 
full of fire and spirit, and recalled the memory 
of more stirring times when the Liberal party 
was in heart and strength. Mr. Lowe spoke 
against the new title with a vivacity and a bitter- 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



ness of sarcasm that reminded listeners of his 
famous opposition to the Reform Bill of 18GG. 
Mr. Joseph Cowen, Member for Newcastle, who 
had been in Parliament for some sessions with- 
out making any mark, suddenly broke into the 
debates with a speech which at once won him 
the name of an orator, and which a leading 
member of the Government, Mr. Gatharne 
Hardy, described as having "electrified" the 
House. Mr. Disraeli chaffed the Opposition 
rather than reasoned with it. He cited one jus- 
tification of the title, a letter from a young lady 
at school who had directed his attention to the 
fact that in " Guy's Geography " the Queen was 
already described as Empress of India. This 
style of argument did not add much to the dig- 
nity of the debate. Mr. Lowe spoke with justi- 
fiable anger and contempt of the Prime-minister's 
introducing "the lispings of the nursery" into a 
grave discussion, and asked whether Mr. Disraeli 
wished to make the House in general think as 
meanly of the subject as he did himself. The 
Government, of course, carried their point. They 
deferred so far to public feeling as to put into 
the Act a provision against the use of the Im- 
perial title in the United Kingdom. There was, 
indeed, a desire that its use should be prohibited 
everywhere except in India, and most of the 
members of the Opposition were at first under 
the impression that the Government had under- 
taken to do so much. But the only restriction 
introduced into the Act had reference to the em- 
ployment of the additional title in these islands. 
The unlucky subject was the occasion of a ne\v 
and a somewhat unseemly dispute afterwards. 
In a speech which he delivered to a public meet- 
ing at East Retford, Mr. Lowe made an unfortu- 
nate statement to the effect that the Queen had 
endeavored to induce two former Ministers to 
confer upon her this new title, and had not suc- 
ceeded. Mr. Lowe proved to be absolutely 
wrong in his assertion. No attempt of the kind 
had ever been made by the Queen. Mr. Dis- 
raeli found his enemy delivered into his hands. 
The question was incidentally and indirectly 
brought up in the House of Commons on May 2, 
1876, and Mr. Disraeli seized the opportunity. 
He denounced Mr. Lowe, thundered at him from 
across the table, piled up a heap of negative evi- 
dence to show that his assertion could not be 
true, and at the very close of his speech came 
down on the hapless offender with the crushing 
announcement that he had the authority of the 
Queen herself to contradict the statement. Mr. 
Lowe sat like one crushed, while Mr. Disraeli 
roared at him and banged the table at him. He 
said nothing that night ; but on the following 
Thursday evening he made an apology, which 
assuredly did not want completeness or humility. 
The title which was the occasion for so much de- 
bate has not come into greater popular favor 
since that time. The country soon forgot all 
about the matter. More serious questions were 
coming up to engage the attention of the public. 
When Mr. Disraeli was pressed during the 
debates on the Royal Title to give some really 
serious reason for the change, it was observed 
as significant that he made reference more or less 
vague to the necessity of asserting the position 
of the Sovereign of England as supreme ruler 
over the whole empire of India. Mr. Disraeli 
had purposely touched a chord which was sure 
to vibrate all over the country. The necessity 
to which he alluded was the necessity of setting 
up the flag of England on the citadel of Eng- 
land's Asiatic Empire as a warning to the one 
enemy whom the English people believed they 
had reason to dread. Mr. Disraeli had raised 
what has been called the Russian spectre. A 
great crisis was now again at hand. During all 
the interval since the Crimean War Turkey had 
been occupied in throwing away every opportu- 
nity for her political and social reorganization. 
There bad been insurrections in Crete, in the 
Herzegovina, in other parts of the provinces mis- 
governed by Turkey ; and they had been put 
down, whenever the Porte was strong enough, 
with a barbarous severity. Russia, meanwhile, 
was returning to the position she occupied before 
the Crimean War. She had lately been making 
rapid advances into Central Asia. Post after 



post which were once believed to be secure from 
her approach were dropping into her hands. 
Her goal of one day became her starting-point 
of the next. Early in July, 1S75, Lord Derby 
received an account of the disturbances in the 
Herzegovina, and something like an organized 
insurrection in Bosnia. The provinces inhabited 
by men of alien race and religion, over which 
Turkey rules, have always been the source of 
her weakness. Eate has given to the most in- 
capable and worthless Government in the world 
the task of ruling over a great variety of nation- 
alities and of creeds that agree in hardly any- 
thing but in their common detestation of Otto- 
man rule. The Slav dreads and detests the 
Greek. The Greek despises the Slav. The Al- 
banian objects alike to Slav and to Greek. The 
Mohammedan Albanian detests the Catholic Al- 
banian. The Slavs are drawn towards Russia 
by affinity of race and of religion. But this very 
fact, which makes in one sense their political 
strength, brings with it a certain condition of 
weakness, because by making them more for- 
midable to Greeks and to Germans it increases 
the dislike of their growing power, and the de- 
termination to oppose it. The settlement made 
by the Crimean War had since that time been 
gradually breaking down. Servia was an inde- 
pendent State in all but the name. The Danti- 
bian provinces, which were to have been gov- 
erned by separate rulers, united themselves first 
under one ruler and then in one political system, 
and at last became the sovereign State of Rou- 
mania under the Prussian Prince, Charles of 
Hohenzollern. Thus the result which most of 
the European Powers at the time of the Con- 
gress of Paris endeavored to prevent was suc- 
cessfully accomplished in spite of their inclina- 
tions. The efforts to keep Bosnia and Herze- 
govina in quiet subjection to the Sultan proved 
a miserable failure. The insurrection which now 
broke out in Herzegovina spread with rapidity. 
The Turkish statesmen insisted that it was re- 
ceiving help not only from Russia but from the 
subjects of Austria, as well as from Servia and 
Montenegro. An appeal was made to the Eng- 
lish Government to use its influence with Austria 
in order to prevent the insurgents from receiving 
any assistance from across the Austrian frontier. 
Servia and Montenegro were appealed to in a 
similar manner. Lord Derby seems to have 
acted with indecision and with feebleness. He 
does not appear to have appreciated the imme- 
diate greatness of the crisis, and he offended 
popular feeling, and even the public conscience, 
by urging on the Porte that the best they could 
do was to put down the insurrection as quickly 
as possible, and not allow it to swell to the mag- 
nitude of a question of European interest. 

The insurrection continued to spread, and at 
last it was determined by some of the Western 
Powers that the time had come for European 
intervention. Count Andrassy, the Austrian 
Minister, drew up a Note, addressed to the 
Porte, in which Austria, Germany, and Russia 
united in a declaration that the promises of re- 
form made by the Porte had not been carried 
into effect, and that some combined action by 
the Powers of Europe was necessary to insist on 
the fulfilment of the many engagements which 
Turkey had made and broken. This Note was 
dated December 30, 1875, and it was communi- 
cated to the Powers which had signed the Treaty 
of Paris. France and Italy were ready at once 
to join it; but England delayed. In fact, Lord 
Derby held off so long that it was not until he 
had received a despatch from the Porte itself re- 
questing his Government to join in the Note, 
that he at last consented to take part in the re- 
monstrance. Rightly or wrongly the statesmen 
of Constantinople had got it into their heads that 
England was their devoted friend, bound by her 
own interests to protect them against whatever 
opposition. Instead therefore of regarding Eng- 
land's co-operation in the Andrassy Note as one 
other influence brought to compel them to fulfil 
their engagements, they seem to have accepted 
it as a secret force working on their side to en- 
able them to escape from their responsibilities. 
Lord Derby joined in the Andrassy Note. It 
was sent to the Porte. The Ottoman Govern- 



ment promised to carry out in the readiest manner 
the suggestions which the Note contained, and 
did nothing more than promise. After a few 
weeks it became perfectly evident that she had 
not only done nothing, but had never intended 
to do anything. Russia, therefore, proposed that 
the three Imperial Ministers of the Continent 
should meet at Berlin and consider what steps 
should be taken in order to make the Andrassy 
Note a reality. A document, called the Berlin 
Memorandum, was drawn up, in which the three 
Powers proposed to consider the measures by 
which to enforce on Turkey the fulfilment of her 
broken promises. It was distinctly implied that 
should Turkey fail to comply, force would be 
used to compel her. But, on the other hand, it 
is clear that this was a menace which would of it- 
self have insured the object. It is out of the ques- 
tion to suppose that Turkey would have thought 
of resisting the concerted action of England, 
France, Austria, Germany, Russia, and Italy. 

Unfortunately, however, Lord Derby and the 
English Government refused to join in the Ber- 
lin Memorandum. The refusal of England was 
fatal to the project. The Memorandum was 
never presented. Concert between the European 
Powers was for a time at an end. From that 
moment every one in Western Europe knew that 
war was certain in the East. A succession of 
startling events kept public attention on the 
strain. There was an outbreak of Mussulman 
fanaticism at Salonica, and the French and Ger- 
man Consuls were murdered. A revolutionary 
demonstration took place in Constantinople, and 
the Sultan Abdul Aziz was dethroned. The 
miserable Abdul Aziz committed suicide in a day 
or two after. This was the Sultan who had been 
received in England with so much official cere- 
mony and public acclaim. His nephew Murad 
was made Sultan in his place. Murad reigned 
only three months and was then dethroned, and 
his brother Ilamid put in his place. Suddenly 
the attention of the English public was called 
away to events more terrible than palace revolu- 
tions in Constantinople. An insurrection had 
broken out in Bulgaria, and the Turkish Govern- 
ment sent large numbers of Bashi-Bazouks and 
other irregular troops to crush it. They did not, 
however, stay their hand when the insurrection 
had been crushed. Repression soon turned into 
massacre. Rumors began to reach Constanti- 
nople of hideous wholesale murders of women 
and children committed in Bulgaria. The Con- 
stantinople correspondent of the Daily A r ews in- 
vestigated the evidence, and found it but too 
true. In a few days after accounts were laid 
before the English public of the deeds which 
ever since have been known as "the Bulgarian 
atrocities." 

Mr. Disraeli at first treated these terrible sto- 
ries with a levity which jarred harshly on the 
ears of almost all his listeners. It was plain 
that he did not believe them or attach any im- 
portance to them. He took no trouble to ex- 
amine the testimony on which they rested. He 
therefore thought himself warranted in dealing 
with them as if they were merely stories to laugh 
at. Mr. Disraeli had always the faculty of per- 
suading himself to believe or disbelieve anything 
according as he liked. But the subject proved 
to be far too serious for light-minded treatment. 
Mr. Baring, the English Consul, sent out spe- 
cially to Bulgaria to make inquiries, and who was 
supposed to be in general sympathy with Tur- 
key, reported that no fewer than twelve thousand 
persons had been killed in the district of Philip- 
popolis. The defenders of the Turks insisted 
that the only deaths were those which took place 
in fight — insurgents on one side, Turkish sol- 
diers on the other. But Mr. Baring, as well as 
Mr. MacGahan, the Daily Xncs correspondent, 
saw whole masses of the dead bodies of women 
and children piled up in places where the corpses 
of no combatants were to be seen. The women 
and children were simply massacred. The Turk- 
ish Government may not have known at first of 
the deeds that were dune by their soldiers. But 
it is certain that after the facts had been forced 
upon their attention, they conferred new honors 
upon the chief perpetrators of the crimes which 
shocked the moral sense of all Europe. 



bO 



A SHORT HISTORY OE OUR OWN TIMES. 



Mr. Bright happily described the agitation 
which followed in England as an uprising of the 
English people. At first it was an uprising with- 
out a leader. Soon, however, it had a chief of 
incomparable energy and power. Mr. Gladstone 
came out of his semi- retirement. He flung 
himself into the agitation against Turkey with 
the impassioned energy of a youth. He made 
speeches in the House of Commons and out of 
it; he attended monster meetings in-doors and 
ont-of-doors; he published pamphlets, he wrote 
letters, he brought forward motions in Parlia- 
ment; he denounced the crimes of Turkey, and 
the policy which would support Turkey, with an 
eloquence that for a time set England aflame. 
After a while no doubt there set in a sort of re- 
action against the fervent mood. The country 
could not long continue in this white-heat of ex- 
citement. Mr. .Disraeli and his supporters were 
able to work with great effect on that strong, 
deep-rooted feeling of the modern Englishman, 
his distrust and dread of Russia. Mr. Gladstone 
had in his pamphlet, "Bulgarian Horrors, and 
the Question of the East," insisted that the only 
way to secure any permanent good for the Chris- 
tian provinces of Turkey was to turn the Turk- 
ish officials, "bag and baggage," out of them. 
The cry went forth that he had called for the 
expulsion of the Turks from Europe, and that 
the moment the Turks went out of Constantino- 
ple the Russians must come in. Nothing could 
have been better suited to rouse up reaction and 
alarm. A sudden and strong revulsion of feel- 
ing took place in favor of the Government. Mr. 
Gladstone was honestly regarded by millions of 
Englishmen as the friend and the instrument of 
Russia, Mr. Disraeli as the champion of England, 
and the enemy of England's enemy. 

Mr. Disraeli? By this time there was no Mr. 
Disraeli. The 11th of August, 1876, was an 
important day in the Parliamentary history of 
England. Mr. Disraeli made then his last speech 
in the House of Commons. He sustained and 
defended the policy of the Government as an 
Imperial policy, the object of which was to main- 
tain the Empire of England. The House of 
Commons little knew that this speech was the 
last it was to hear from him. The secret was 
well kept. It was made known only to the 
newspapers that night. Next morning all Eng- 
land knew that Benjamin Disraeli had become 
Earl of Beaconsfield. Everybody was well sat- 
isfied that if Mr Disraeli liked an earldom he 
should have it. His political career had had 
claims enough to any reward of the kind that 
his Sovereign could bestow. If he had battled 
for honor, it was but fair that he should have the 
prize. Coming as it did just then, the announce- 
ment of his elevation to the peerage seemed like 
a defiance flung in the face of those who would 
arraign his policy. The attacks made on Mr. 
Disraeli were to be answered by Lord Beacons- 
field ; his enemies had become his footstool. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE CONGRESS AT BERLIN. 

Lord Beaconsfield went down to the coun- 
ty which he had represented so long, and made 
a farewell speech at Aylesbury. The speech was 
in many parts worthy of the occasion. Unfortu- 
nately Lord Beaconsfield soon went on to make 
a fierce attack on his political opponents. The 
controversy between Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. 
Gladstone, bitter enough before, became still 
more bitter now. The policy each represented 
may be described in a few very summary words. 
Lord Beaconsfield was for maintaining Turkey 
at all risks as a barrrier against Russia. Mr. 
Gladstone was for renouncing all responsibility 
for Turkey and taking the consequences. 

The common expectation was soon fulfilled. 
At the close of June, 1876, Servia and Montene- 
gro declared war against Turkey. Servia's strug- 
gle was short. At the beginning of September 
the struggle was over, and Servia was practical- 
ly at Turkey's feet. The hardy Montenegrin 
mountaineers held their own stoutly against the 
Turks everywhere, but they could not seriously 
influence the fortunes of a war. Russia inter- 
vened, and insisted upon an armistice, and her 



demand was acceded to by Turkey. Meanwhile 
the general feeling in England on both sides was 
growing stronger and stronger. Public meet- 
ings of Mr. Gladstone's supporters were held all 
over the country, and the English Government 
was urged in the most emphatic manner to bring 
some strong influence to bear on Turkey. On 
the other hand, it cannot be doubted that the 
common suspicion of Russia's designs began to 
grow more keen and wakeful than ever. Lord 
Derby frankly made known to the Emperor 
Alexander what was thought or feared in Eng- 
land, and the Emperor replied by pledging his 
sacred word that he had no intention of occupy- 
ing Constantinople, and that if he were compelled 
by events to occupy any part of Bulgaria, it 
should he only provisionally, and until the safe- 
ty of the Christians should be secured. Then 
Lord Derby proposed that a Conference of the 
European Powers should be held at Constanti- 
nople in order to agree upon some scheme which 

] should provide at once for the proper govern- 
ment of the various provinces and populations 

I subject to Turkey, and at the same time for the 
maintenance of the independence and integrity 
of the Ottoman Empire. The proposal was ac- 
cepted by all the Great Powers, and on Novem- 
ber 8, 1876, it was announced that Lord Salis- 
bury and Sir Henry Elliott, the English Ambas- 
sador at Constantinople, were to attend as the 
representatives of England. 

Lord Beaconsfield was apparently determined 
to recover the popularity that had been some- 
what impaired by his unlucky way of dealing 
with the massacres of Bulgaria. His plan now 
was to go boldly in for denunciation of Russia. 
He sometimes talked of Russia as he might of an 
enemy who had already declared war against Eng- 
land. The prospects of a peaceful settlement of 
the European controversy seemed to become heav- 
ily overclouded. Lord Beaconsfield appeared to 
be holding the dogs of war by the collar, and only 
waiting for the convenient moment to let them 
slip. Every one knew that some of his col- 
leagues, Lord Derby, for example, and Lord Car- 
narvon, were opposed to any thought of war, and 
felt almost as strongly for the Christian prov- 
vinces of Turkey as Mr. Gladstone did. But 
people shook their heads doubtfully when it was 
asked whether Lord Derby or Lord Carnarvon, 
or both combined, could prevail in strength of 
will against Lord Beaconsfield. 

The Conference at Constantinople came to 
nothing. The Turkish statesmen at first at- 
tempted to put off the diplomatist of the West by 
the announcement that the Sultan had granted a 
Constitution to Turkey, and that there was to 
be a Parliament at which representatives of all 
the provinces were to speak for themselves. 
There was, in fact, a Turkish Parliament called 
together. Of course the Western statesmen 
could not be put off by an announcement of this 
kind. They knew well enough what a Turkish 
Parliament must mean. It seems almost super- 
fluous to say that the Turkish Parliament was 
ordered to disappear very soon after the occasion 
passed away for trying to deceive the Great Eu- 
ropean Powers. Evidently Turkey had got it 
into her head that the English Government would 
at the last moment stand by her, and would not 
permit her to be coerced. She refused to come 
to terms, and the Conference broke up without 
having accomplished any good. New attempts 
at arrangement were made between England, 
Russia, and others of the Great Powers, but they 
fell through. Then at last, on April 24, 1877, 
Russia declared war against Turkey, and on 
June 27 a Russian army crossed the Danube and 
moved towards the Balkans, meeting with com- 
paratively little resistance, while at the same 
time another Russian force invaded Asia Minor. 
Eor a while the Russians seemed likely to car- 
ry all before them. But they had made the one 
great mistake of altogether undervaluing their 
enemies. Their preparations were hasty and 
imperfect. The Turks turned upon them unex- 
pectedly and made a gallant and almost desper- 
ate resistance. One of their commauders, Os- 
man Pasha, suddenly threw up defensive works 
at Plevna, in Bulgaria, a point the Russians had 
neglected to secure, and maintained himself there, 



repulsing the Russians many times with great 
slaughter. For a while success seemed alto- 
gether on the side of the Turks, and many peo- 
ple in England were convinced that the Russian 
enterprise was already an entire failure; that 
nothing remained for the armies of the Czar but 
retreat, disaster, and disgrace. Under the di- 
recting skill, however, of General Todleben, the 
great soldier whose splendid defence of Sebasto- 
pol hud made the one grand military reputation 
of the Crimean War, the fortunes of the cam- 
paign again turned. Kars was taken by .i-- 
sault on November 18, 1877; Plevna surrender- 
ed on December 10. At the opening of 1878 
the Turks were completely prostrate. The road 
to Constantinople was clear. Before the Eng- 
lish public had time to recover their breath and 
to observe what was taking place, the victorious 
armies of Russia were almost within sight of the 
minarets of Stamboul. 

Meanwhile the English Government were tak- 
ing momentous action. In the first days of 
1878 Sir Henry Elliott, who had been Ambassa- 
dor in Constantinople, was transferred to Vienna, 
and Mr. Layard, who had been Minister at Mad- 
rid, was sent to the Turkish capital to represent 
England there. Mr. Layard was known to be 
a strong believer in Turkey ; more Turkish in 
some respects than the Turks themselves. But 
he was a man of superabundant energy: of 
what might be described as boisterous energy. 
The Ottoman Government could not but accept 
his appointment as a new and stronger proof that 
the English Government were determined to 
stand their friend ; but they ought to have ac- 
cepted it, too, as evidence that the English 
Government were determined to use some 
pressure to make them amenable to reason. 
Unfortunately it would appear that the Sultan's 
Government accepted Mr. Layard's appointment 
in the one sense only, and not in the other. 
Parliament was called together at least a fort- 
night before the time usual during recent years. 
The Speech from the Throne announced that her 
Majesty could not conceal from herself that 
should the hostilities between Russia and Turkey 
unfortunately be prolonged, " some unexpected 
occurrence may render it incumbent on me to 
adopt measures of precaution." This looked 
ominous to those who wished for peace, and it 
raised the spirits of the war party. There was a 
very large and a very noisy war party already in 
existence. It was particularly strong in Lon- 
don. It embraced some Liberals, as well as 
nearly all Tories. It was popular in the music- 
halls and the public-houses of London. The 
men of action got a nickname. A poet of the 
music-halls had composed a ballad which was 
sung at one of these caves of harmony every 
night amid the tumultuous applause of excited 
patriots. The refrain of this war-song contained 
the spirit-stirring words : 

We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if we do, 
We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the 
money too. 

Some one whose pulses this lyrical outburst of 
national pride failed to stir called the party of its 
enthusiasts Jingoes. The name was caught up 
at once, and the party were universally known 
as the Jingoes. The term, applied as one of ridi- 
cule and reproach, was adopted by chivalrous Jin- 
goes as a name of pride. 

The Government ordered the Mediterranean 
fleet to pass the Dardanelles and go up to Con- 
stantinople. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
announced that he would ask for a supplementary 
estimate of six millions for naval and military 
purposes. Thereupon Lord Carnarvon, the Co- 
lonial Secretary, at once resigned. He had been 
anxious to get out of the Ministry before, but 
Lord Beaconsfield induced him to remain. He 
disapproved now so strongly of the despatch of 
the fleet to Constantinople and the supplement- 
ary vote, that he would not any longer defer his 
resignation. Lord Derby was also anxious to 
resign and, indeed, tendered his resignation, but 
he was prevailed upon to withdraw it. The 
fleet meanwhile was ordered back from the Dar- 
danelles to Besika Bay. It had got as far as 
the opening of the Straits when it was recalled. 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



87 



The Liberal Opposition in the House of Com- 
mons kept on protesting :igainst the various war 
measures of the Government, hut with little ef- 
fect. While all this agitation in and nut of 
Parliament was going on, the news came that 
the Turks, utterly broken down, had been com- 
pelled to sign an armistice, and an agreement con- 
taining a basis of peace, at Adrianople. Then, 
following quickly on the heels of this announce- 
ment, came a report that the Russians, notwith- 
standing the armistice, were pushing on towards 
Constantinople with the intention of occupying 
the Turkish capital. A cry of alarm and indig- 
nation broke out in London. If the clamor of 
the streets at that moment had been the voice of 
England, nothing could have prevented a dec- 
laration of war against Russia. Happily, how- 
ever, it was proved that the rumor of Russian 
advance was unfounded. The fleet was now 
sent in good earnest through the Dardanelles, 
and anchored a few miles below Constantinople. 
Russia at first protested that if the English fleet 
passed the Straits Russian troops ought to oc- 
cupy the city. Lord Derby was firm, and terms 
of arrangement were found — English troops were 
not to be disembarked and the Russians were 
not to advance. Russia was still open to nego- 
tiation. 

Probably Russia had no idea of taking on 
herself the tremendous responsibility of an occu- 
pation of Constantinople. She had entered into 
a treaty with Turkey, the famous Treaty of San 
Stefano, which secured for the populations of the 
Christian provinces almost complete indepen- 
dence of Turkey, and was to create a great new 
Bulgarian State with a seaport on the JEgean 
Sea. The English Government refused to recog- 
nize this treaty. Russia offered to submit the 
treaty to the perusal, if we may use the expres- 
sion, of a Congress ; but argued that the stipu- 
lations which merely concerned Turkey and 
herself were for Turkey and herself to settle be- 
tween them. This was obviously an untenable 
position. It is out of the question to suppose 
that, as long as European policy is conducted on 
its present principles, the Great Powers of the 
West could consent to allow Russia to force on 
Turkey any terms she might think proper. Tur- 
key meanwhile kept feebly moaning that she had 
been coerced into signing the treaty. The Gov- 
ernment determined to call in the Reserves, to 
summon a contingent of Indian troops to Europe, 
to occupy Cyprus, and to make an armed landing 
on the coast of Syria. All these resolves were 
not, however, made known at the time. Every 
one felt sure that something important was going 
on, and public expectancy was strained to the 
full. On March 28, 1878, Lord Derby announced 
his resignation. Measures, he said, had been re- 
solved upon of which he could not approve. He 
did not give any explanation of the measures to 
which he objected. Lord B-eaconsfield spoke a 
few words of good feeling and good taste after 
Lord Derby's announcement. He had hoped, he 
said, that Lord Derby would soon come to oc- 
cupy the place of Prime-minister which he now 
held; he dwelt upon their long friendship. Not 
much was said on either side of what the Gov- 
ernment were doing. The last hope of the Peace 
Party seemed to have vanished when Lord Derby 
left his office. 

Lord Salisbury was made Foreign Minister. 
He was succeeded in the India Office by Mr. 
Gathorne Hardy, now created Lord Cranbrook. 
Colonel Stanley, brother of Lord Derby, took the 
office of Minister of War in Lord Cranbrook 's 
place. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had already 
become Secretary for the Colonies on the resig- 
nation of Lord Carnarvon. The post of Irish 
Secretary had been given to Mr. James Lowther. 
Lord Salisbury issued a circular in which he de- 
clared that it would be impossible for England to 
enter a Congress which was not free to consider 
the whole of the provisions of the Treaty of San 
Stefano. The very day after Parliament had 
adjourned for the Easter recess, the Indian Gov- 
ernment received orders to send certain of their 
troops to Malta. This was\a complete surprise 
to the country. It was made the occasion for a 
very serious controversy on a grave constitutional 
question in both Houses of Parliameut. The 



Opposition contended that the constitutional prin- 
ciple which left it. for Parliament to fix the num- 
ber of soldiers the Crown might maintain in 
England was reduced to nothingness if the Prime- 
minister could at any moment, without even con- 
sulting Parliament, draw what reinforcements he 
thought fit from the almost limitless resources 
of India. The majority then supporting Lord 
Beaconsfield were not, however, much disposed 
to care about argument. They were willing to 
approve of any step Lord Beaconsfield might 
think fit to take. 

Prince Bismarck had often during these events 
shown an inclination to exhibit himself in the 
new attitude of a peaceful mediator. He now 
interposed again, and issued invitations for a 
Congress to be held in Berlin to discuss the 
whole contents of the Treaty of San Stefano. 
After some delay, discussion, and altercation, 
Russia agreed to accept the invitation on the con- 
ditions proposed, and it was finally resolved that 
a Congress should assemble in Berlin on the ap- 
proaching June 13. Much to the surprise of the 
public, Lord Beaconsfield announced that he 
himself would attend, accompanied by Lord 
Salisbury, and conduct the negotiations in Berlin. 
The event was, we believe, without precedent. 
Never before had an English Prime-minister left 
the country while Parliament was sitting to act 
as the representative of England in a foreign cap- 
ital. The part he had undertaken to play suited 
Lord Beaconsfield's love for the picturesque and 
the theatrical. His journey to Berlin was a sort 
of triumphal progress. At every great city, 
almost at every, railway station, as he passed, 
crowds turned out, drawn partly by curiosity, 
partly by admiration, to see the English states- 
man whose strange and varied career had so 
long excited the wondering attention of Europe. 
Prince Bismarck presided at the Congress, and, 
it is said, departed from the usual custom of 
diplomatic assemblages by opening the proceed- 
ings in English. The use of our language was 
understood to be a kindly and somewhat patron- 
izing deference to the English Prime-minister, 
whose knowledge of spoken French was supposed 
to have fallen rather into decay of late years. 
The Congress discussed the whole, or nearly the 
whole, of the questions opened up by the recent 
war. Greece claimed to be heard there, and, 
after some delay and some difficulty, was allowed 
to plead in her own cause. 

The Treaty of Berlin recognized the complete 
independence of Roumania, of Servia, and of 
Montenegro, subject only to certain stipulations 
with regard to religious equality in each of these 
States. To Montenegro it gave a seaport and a 
slip of territory attaching to it. Thus one great 
object of the mountaineers was accomplished. 
They were able to reach the sea. The treaty 
created, north of the Balkans, a State of Bulga- 
ria — a much smaller Bulgaria than that sketched 
in the Treaty of San Stefano. Bulgaria was to 
be a self-governing State tributary to the Sultan 
and owning his suzerainty, but in other respects 
practically independent. It was to be governed 
by a prince whom the population were to elect 
with the assent, of the Great Powers and the con- 
firmation of the Sultan. It was stipulated that 
no member of any reigning dynasty of the Great 
European Powers should be eligible as a candi- 
date. South of the Balkans, the treaty created 
another and a different kind of State, under the 
name of Eastern Roumelia. That State was to 
remain under the direct political and military 
authority of the Sultan, but it was to have, as to 
its interior condition, a sort of "administrative 
autonomy," as the favorite diplomatic phrase 
then was. East Roumelia was to be ruled by a 
Christian Governor, and there was a stipulation 
that the Sultan should not employ any irregular 
troops, such as the Circassians and the Bashi- 
Bazouks, in the garrisons of the frontier. The 
European Powers were to arrange in concert 
• with the Porte for the organization of this new 
State. As regarded Greece, it. was arranged that 
the Sultan and the King of the Hellenes were to 
come to some understanding for a modification 
of the Greek frontier, and that if they could not 
arrange this between themselves, the Great Pow- 
ers were to have the right of ottering, that is to 



say, in plain words, of insisting on, their media- 
tion. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were to be 
occupied and administered by Austria. Rou- 
mania undertook, or in other words was com- 
pelled to undertake, to return to Russia that 
portion of Bessarabian territory which had been 
detached from Russia by the Treaty of Paris. 
Roumania was to receive in compensation some 
islands forming the Delta of the Danube, and a 
portion of the Dobrudscha. As regarded Asia, 
the Porte was to cede to Russia, Ardahan, Kars, 
and Batoum, with its great port on the Black 
Sea. 

The Treaty of Berlin gave rise to keen and 
adverse criticism. Very bitter indeed was the 
controversy provoked by the surrender to Russia 
of the Bessarabian territory taken from her at 
the time of the Crimean War. Russia had re- 
gained everything which she had been compelled 
to sacrifice at the close of the Crimean War. 
The Black Sea was open to her war vessels, and 
its shores to her arsenals. The last slight trace 
of Crimean humiliation was effaced in the resto- 
ration of the territory of Bessarabia. Profound 
disappointment was caused among many Euro- 
pean populations, as well as among the" Greeks 
themselves, by the arrangements for the rectifi- 
cation of the Greek frontier. Thus, speaking 
roughly, it may be said that the effect of the Con- 
gress of Berlin on the mind of Europe was to 
make the Christian populations of the south-east 
believe that their friend was Russia, and their 
enemies were England and Turkey ; to make the 
Greeks believe that France was their especial 
friend, and that England was their enemy ; and 
to create an uncomfortable impression every- 
where that the whole Congress was a lire-ar- 
ranged business, a transaction with a foregone 
conclusion, a dramatic performance carefully re- 
hearsed before in all its details, and merely en- 
acted as a pageant on the Berlin stage. 

The latter impression was converted into a 
conviction by certain subsequent revelations. It 
came out that Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Sal- 
isbury had been entering into secret engage- 
ments both with Russia and with Turkey. The 
secret engagement with Russia was prematurely 
divulged by the heedlessness or the treachery of 
a peison who had been called in at a small tem- 
porary rate of pay to assist in copying despatch- 
es in the Foreign Office. It bound England to 
put up with the handing back of Bessarabia and 
the cession of the port of Batoum. It conceded 
all the points in advance which the English peo- 
ple believed that their plenipotentiaries had been 
making brave struggle for at Berlin. Lord Bea- 
consfield had not then frightened Russia into ac- 
cepting the Congress on his terms. The call of 
the Indian troops to Malta had not done the 
business ; nor the reserves, nor the vote of the 
six millions. Russia had gone into the Congress 
because Lord Salisbury had made a secret en- 
gagement with her that she should have what 
she specially wanted. The Congress was only a 
piece of pompous and empty ceremonial. By 
another secret engagement entered into with 
Turkey, the English Governmeri't undertook to 
guarantee to Turkey her Asiatic possessions 
against all invasion on condition that Turkey 
handed over to England the island of Cyprus 
for her occupation. The difference, therefore, 
between the policy of the Conservative Govern- 
ment and the policy of the Liberals was now 
thrown into the strongest possible relief. Mr. 
Gladstone, and those who thought with him, had 
always made it a principle of their policy that 
England had no special and separate interest in 
maintaining the independence of Turkey. Lord 
Beaconsfield now declared it to be the cardinal 
principle of his policy that England specially, 
England above all, was concerned to maintain 
the integrity and the independence of the Turk- 
ish Empire ; that in fact the security of Turkey 
was as much part of the duty of English states- 
manship as the security of the Channel Islands 
or of Malta. 

For the moment the policy of Lord Beacons- 
field seemed to be entirely in the ascendant. 
His return home was celebrated with great pomp 
and circumstance. He made a conquering hero's 
progress through the streets of London. Arrived 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



at the Foreign Office, he addressed from the win- 
dows an excited and tumultuous crowd, and he 
proclaimed, in words which became memorable, 
that he had brought back "Peace with Honor." 
At this moment he was probably the most con- 
spicuous public man in the world, unless we make 
one single exception in favor of Prince Bismarck. 
He had attained to a position of almost unrivalled 
popularity in England. He ought to have fol- 
lowed classic advice and sacrificed at that mo- 
ment his dearest possession to the gods. No 
man without sacrifice could buy the lease of such 
a position and the endurance of such a success. 
Meanwhile, so far as could be judged by exter- 
nal symptoms, and in the metropolis, Mr. Glad- 
stone and his followers were down to their low- 
est depth, their very zero of unpopularity. The 
majority of the London newspapers were entirely 
on the side of Lord Beaconsfield. In the prov- 
inces, on the whole, Liberalism still remained 
popular. Mr. Gladstone would still have been 
sure of the cheers of a great provincial meeting. 
But there came a day in London when, passing 
with his wife through one of the streets, he was 
compelled to seek the shelter of a friendly hall- 
door in order to escape from the threatening dem- 
onstrations of a little mob of patriots boister- 
ously returning from a Jingo carnival. 

During the excitement caused by the prepara- 
tions for the Congress of Berlin a long career 
came quietly to a close. On May 28, 1878, 
Lord Russell died at his residence, Pembroke 
Lodge, Richmond. He may be said to have 
faded out of life, to have ceased to live, rather 
than to have died, so quiet, gradual, almost im- 
perceptible was the passing away. He had not 
for some time taken any active part in public af- 
fairs. Now and then some public event aroused 
his attention, and he addressed a letter to one of 
the newspapers. To the last moments of his life 
Lord Russell refused to surrender wholly his 
concern in the affairs of men. The world lis- 
tened respectfully to these few occasional words 
from one who had borne a leader's part in some 
of the greatest political struggles of the century, 
and who still from the very edge of the grave 
was anxious to offer his whisper of counsel or of 
warning. His had been on the whole a great 
career. He had not only lived through great 
changes, he had helped to accomplish some of 
the greatest changes his time had known. His 
life was singularly unselfish. He was often ea- 
ger and pushing where he believed that he saw 
his way to do something needful, and men con- 
founded the zeal of a cause with the eagerness 
of personal ambition. He never cared for mon- 
ey, and his original rank raised him above any 
possible consideration for enhanced social dis- 
tinction. He had made many mistakes; but 
those who knew him best prized most highly 
both his political capacity and his personal char- 
acter. His later years were made happy and 
smooth by all that the love of a household could 
do. He had lost a son, a young man of much 
political promise, Lord Amberley, who died in 
1876; but on the whole he had suffered less in 
his later time than is commonly the lot of those 
who live to extreme old age. The time of his 
death was in a certain sense appropriate. His 
public career had just begun at the time of the 
Congress of Vienna; it closed with the prepara- 
tions for the Congress of Berlin. 

Why did not Lord Beaconsfield sacrifice to the 
gods his dearest possession, his political majority, 
immediately after the triumphal return from Ber- 
lin ? The opinion of nearly all who pretended 
to form a judgment was, that at that time the 
great majority of the constituencies were with 
him. It is said that he was strongly advised 
by some of his northern supporters not to put 
tlie country then to the cost of a general election. 
Whatever the reason may have been, the ex- 
pected dissolution did not take place, and from 
that time Lord Beaconsfield never had any chance 
of a successful appeal to the country. From that 
time the popularity of his Government began to 
go down and down. Trade was depressed. The 
badness of trade and the general depression were 
no fault of the Administration, but the Govern- 
ment aggravated every evil of this kind by the 
strain on which they kept the expectation of the 



country. Their domestic policy had not been ! 
successful. They had attempted many large 
measures, and failed to carry them through, j 
They had not satisfied the country party, to whom ; 
they owed so much. The malt tax remained a \ 
grievance, as it had been for generations. The 
Government had got into trouble with the Home 
Rule party. Mr. Pamell, a young man but late- 
ly come into Parliament, soon proved himself 
the most remarkable politician who had arisen 
on the field of Irish politics since the day when 
John Mitchel was conveyed away from Lublin 
to Bermuda. The tactics adopted by Mr. Par- 
nell annoyed and discredited the Government. 
The country blamed the Ministry, it scarcely 
knew why, for the manner in which the policy 
called obstructive had been allowed to come into 
force. It was evident that a new chapter in 
Irish agitation was opening, and those who dis- 
liked the prospect felt inclined to lay the blame 
on the Government, as if, because they happen- 
ed to be in office, they must be responsible for 
everything that took place during their official 
reign. Most of all, the Ministry suffered from 
the effect produced upon the country by the 
smaller wars into which they plunged. 

The first of these was the invasion of Afghan- 
istan. The Government determined to send a 
mission to Shere Ali, one of the sons of Dost 
Mohammed, and then the ruler of Cabul, in order 
to guard against Russian intrigue by establishing 
a distinct and paramount influence in Afghanis- 
tan. Shere Ali strongly objected to receive 
either a mission or a permanent Resident. The 
mission was sent forward. It was so numerous 
as to look rather like an army than an embassy. 
It started from Peshawur on September 21, 

1878, but was stopped on the frontier by an 
officer of Shere Ali, who objected to its passing 
through until he had received authority from his 
master. This delay was magnified, by the news 
first received here, into an insolent rebuff. The 
Envoy was ordered to go on, and before long the 
mission was turned into an invasion. The Af- 
ghans made but a poor resistance, and the Eng- 
lish troops soon occupied Cabul. Shere Ali fled 
from his capital. One portion of our forces oc- 
cupied Candahar. Shere Ali died, and Yakoob 
Khan, his son, became his successor. Yakoob 
Khan presented himself at the British camp, 
which had now been established at Gandamak, 
a place between Jellalabad and Cabul. Here 
the Treaty of Gandamak was signed on May 5, 

1879. The Indian Government undertook by 
this treaty to pay the Ameer .£60,000 a year, 
and the Ameer ceded, or appeared to cede, what 
Lord Beaconsfield called the "scientific fron- 
tier," and agreed to admit a British representa- 
tive to reside in Cabul. On those conditions he 
was to be supported against any foreign enemy 
with money and arms, and, if necessary, with 
men. Hardly had the country ceased clapping 
its hands and exulting over the quiet establish- 
ment of an English Resident at Cabul when a 
telegram arrived announcing that the events of 
November, 1841, had repeated themselves in that 
city. The tragedy of Sir Alexander Burnes was 
enacted over again. A popular rising took place 
in Cabul exactly as had happened in 1841. Sir 
Louis Cavagnari, the English Envoy, and all or 
nearly all the members of his staff, were mur- 
dered. There was nothing to be done for it but 
invade Cabul over again, and take vengeance for 
the massacre of the English officers. The Brit- 
ish troops hurried up, fought their way with their 
usual success, and on the Christmas-eve of 1879 
Cabul was again entered. Yakoob Khan, ac- 
cused of complicity in the massacre, was sent as 
a prisoner to India. Cabul was occupied, but 
not possessed. The English Government held in 
their power just as much of Afghanistan as they 
could cover with their encampments. They held 
it for just so long as they kept the encampments 
standing. The Treaty of Gandamak was, of 
course, nothing but waste paper. 

The war in South Africa was, if possible, less 
justifiable; It was also, if possible, more dis- 
astrous. The region which we call South Africa 
consisted of several States, native and European, 
under various forms of authority. Cape Colony 
and Natal were for a long time the only English 



dominions. The Orange Free State and the 
Transvaal Republic were Dutch settlements. In 
1848 the British Government had established 
its authority over the Orange River Territory, but 
it afterwards transferred its powers to a provi- 
sional Government of Dutch origin. The Trans- 
vaal was a Dutch Kepublic with which we bad 
until quite lately no direct connection. In 1852 
the English Government resolved that its oper- 
ations and its responsibilities in South Africa 
should be limited to Cape Colony and Natal, 
and distinctly recognized the independence of 
the Orange Free State and the Transvaal lie- 
public. Besides these States of what we may 
call European origin, there were a great many 
native communities, some of which had enough 
of organization to be almost regarded as States. 
The Kaffirs had often given us trouble before. 
The most powerful tribe in South Africa was 
that of the Zulus. Natal was divided from 
Zulu territory only by the river Tugela. The 
ruler of the Zulu tribe, Cetewayo, was much in- 
clined to a cordial alliance with the English, 
and although he did not owe his power in any 
direct sense to us, yet he went through a form, 
in which our representatives bore their part, of 
accepting his crown at the hands of the English 
Sovereign. He was often involved in disputes 
with the Boers, or Dutch-descended occupants 
of the Transvaal Republic. Other native tribes 
were still more directly and often engaged in 
quarrels with the Boers. The Transvaal Re- 
public made war upon one of the greatest of 
these African chiefs, Secocoeni, and had the 
worst of it in the struggle. The Republic was 
badly managed in every way. Its military op- 
erations were a total failure ; its exchequer 
was ruined ; there seemed hardly any chance of 
maintaining order within its frontier, and the 
prospect appeared at the time to be that its 
South African enemies would overrun the whole 
of the Republic, would thus come up to the bor- 
ders of the English States, and possibly might 
soon involve the English settlers themselves in 
war. Under these conditions a certain number 
of disappointed or alarmed inhabitants of the 
Transvaal made some kind of indirect proposi- 
tion to England that the Republic should be 
annexed to English territory. Sir Theophilus 
Shepstone was sent out by England to ascer- 
tain whether this offer was genuine and na- 
tional. He seems to have been entirely mis- 
taken in his appreciation of the condition of 
things, and he boldly declared the Republic a por- 
tion of the dominions of Great Britain. Mean- 
while there had been a controversy going on 
for a long time between Cetewayo and the 
Transvaal Republic about a certain disputed 
strip of land. The dispute was referred to the 
arbitration of England, with whom Cetewayo 
was then on the most friendly terms. Four 
English arbitrators decided that the disputed 
strip of territory properly belonged to the Zulu 
nation. 

Meanwhile, Sir Bartle Frere was sent out as 
Lord High Commissioner. From the momeut 
of his first appearance on the scene the whole 
state of affairs seems to have undergone a com- 
plete change. Sir Bartle Frere kept back the 
award of the arbitrators for several months, un- 
willing to hand over any new territory uncon- 
ditionally to Cetewayo, whom he regarded as a 
dangerous enemy and an unscrupulous despot. 
During this time a hostile feeling was growing 
up in the mind of Cetewayo. He appears to 
have really become mastered by the conviction 
that the English were determined to find a pre- 
text for making war on him, for annexing his 
territory, and for sending him to prison, as had 
been done with another South African chief, 
Langalibalele, in 1874. Sir Bartle Frere was 
a man who had many times rendered great ser- 
vice to England. He had been Chief Commis- 
sioner in Sciude from 1852 to 1859, and had 
shown great ability and energy during the In- 
dian Mutiny. Since that he had been one of 
the Council of the Viceroy of India ; he had 
been for some years Governor of Bombay, and 
he had been appointed to the Council of the Sec- 
retary of State here at home. He had been sent 
upon an important mission to the Sultan of 



A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 



Zanzibar in 1872, the object of which was to 
endeavor to obtain the suppression of the slave- 
trade, and he succeeded. Sir Bartle Frere seems 
to have been really filled with that imperial in- 
stinct about which other men only talked. His 
was a strong nature with an imperious will and 
an inexhaustible energy. He was undoubtedly 
conscientious and high -principled according to 
his lights. He appears to have been influenced 
by two strong ambitions — to spread the Gospel 
and to extend the territory of England. In 
Africa his mind appears to have become at once 
possessed with the conviction that alike for the 
safety of the whites and the improvement of the 
colored races it would be necessary to extend the 
government of England over the whole southern 
portion of that continent, and to efface the boun- 
daries of native tribes by blending them all into 
one imperial confederation. 

Cetewayo's position made him a rival to Sir 
Bartle Frere's policy, and Sir Bartle Frere ap- 
pears to have made up his mind that these two 
stars were not to keep their motion in one 
sphere, and that South Africa was not to brook 
the double rule of the English Commissioner and 
the Zulu king. Sir Bartle Frere kept the award 
of the four English arbitrators in his hands for 
some months without taking any action upon it, 
and when he did at length announce it to Cete- 
wayo, he accompanied it with an ultimatum de- 
claring that the Zulu army must at once be dis- 
banded and must return to their homes. This was 
in point of fact a declaration of war. The Eng- 
lish troops immediately invaded the Zulu coun- 
try, and almost the first news that reached Eng- 
land of the progress of the war was the story of 
the complete and terrible defeat of an English 
force on January 22, 1879. Not within the 
memory of any living man had so sudden and 
sweeping a disaster fallen upon English arms. 
Englishmen were wholly unused to the very idea 
of English troops being defeated in the field. 
The story that an English force had been sur- 
prised and out-generalled, out-fought, completely 
defeated by half- naked savages, came on the 
country with a shock never felt since at least the 
time of the disasters of Cabul and the Jugdulluk 
Pass. Of course the disaster was retrieved. 
Lord Chelmsford, the Commander-in-chief (son 
of the Lord Chelmsford just dead, who had been 
twice Lord Chancellor), only wanted time, in 
homely language, to pull himself together in 
order to recover his position. The war soon 
came to the end which every one must have ex- 
pected — first the defeat of the Zulu king and then 
his capture. Cetewayo's territory was divided 
amongst the leading native chiefs. A portion 



of it was given to an Englishman, John Dunn, who 
had settled in the country very young.and who had 
become a sort of potentate among the Zulus. 

line melancholy incident made the war mem- 
orable not only to England but to Europe. The 
young French Prince Louis Napoleon, who had 
studied in English military schools, had attached 
himself as a volunteer to Lord Chelmsford's 
staff. During one of the episodes of the war he 
and some of his companions were surprised by 
a body of Zulus. Others escaped, but Prince 
Louis Napoleon was killed. 

The war, although it had ended in a practical 
success, was none the less regarded by the Eng- 
lish public as a blunder and a disaster. Even 
the Afghan enterprise, objectionable though it 
was in almost every way, did not affect the pop- 
ularity of the Government so much as the Zulu 
war. The plain common-sense of England held 
that Sir Bartle Frere, however high and consci- 
entious his motives may have been, was in the 
wrong from first to last, and that the cause of 
Cetewayo was on the whole a cause of fairness 
and of justice. On the Government fell the 
burden of Sir Bartle Frere's responsibilities, 
without Sir Bartle Frere's consoling and self- 
sufficing belief in the justice of his cause and the 
genuineness of his enterprise. 

The distress in the country was growing deep- 
er and deeper day by day. Some of the most 
important trades were suffering heavily. The 
winter of 1878 had been long and bitter, and 
there had been practically no summer. The 
manufacturing and mining districts almost every- 
where over the country were borne down by the 
failure of business. The working-classes were 
in genuine distress. In Ireland there was a 
forecast of something almost approaching to 
famine. When distress affects the trade and 
the population of a country, the first impulse is 
always to find fault with the reigning Govern- 
ment. The authority of the Government in the 
House of Commons was greatly shaken. Sir 
Stafford Northcote had not the strength neces- 
sary to make a successful leader. The result 
was that the House was becoming demoralized. 
The Government brought in a scheme for uni- 
versity education in Ireland, which was nothing 
better than a mutilation of Mr. Gladstone's re- 
jected bill. It was carried through both Houses 
in a few weeks, because the Government were 
anxious to do something which might have the 
appearance of conciliating the Irish people with- 
out going far enough in that direction to estrange 
their Conservative supporters. The measure 
thus devised had exactly the opposite effect from 
that which was intended. It estranged a good 



89 

many Conservative supporters; it roused a new 
feeling of hostility aniung the Non-conformists, 
and it did not concede enough to the demands 
of the Irish Catholics to be of any use in the 
way of conciliation. It was plain that the man- 
date, to use a French phrase, of the Parliament 
was nearly out. The session of 1879 was its 
sixth session; it would only be possible to have 
one session more. Loader and louder grew the 
cry from the Liberal side for the Government at 
once to go to the country. Thus the winter 
passed on. Two or three elections which occur- 
red meantime resulted in favor of the Conserva- 
tives. There was a little renewal of confidence 
among the friends of Lord Beaconsfield, and a 
sudden sinking of the spirits among- most of the 
Liberals. Parliament met in February, and the 
Government gave it to be understood that they 
intended to have what one of them called "a 
fair working session." Suddenly, however, they 
made up their minds that it would be convenient 
to accept Mr. Gladstone's challenge, and to dis- 
solve in the Easter holidays. The dissolution took 
place on March 24, 1880, and the elections began. 
With the very first day of the elections it was 
evident that the Conservative majority was al- 
ready gone. Each succeeding day showed more 
and more the change that had taken place in 
public feeling.- Defeat was turned into disaster. 
Disaster became utter rout and confusion. When 
the elections were over it was found that the 
Conservative party were nowhere. A majority 
of some hundred and twenty sent the Liberals 
back into power. No Liberal statesmen in our 
time ever before saw themselves sustained by 
such an army of followers. There was a mo- 
ment or two of hesitation — of delay. The Queen 
sent for Lord Hartington, she then sent for Lord 
Granville ; but every one knew in advance who 
was to come into office at last. The strife lately 
carried on had been the old duel between two 
great men. Mr. Gladstone had stood up against 
Lord Beaconsfield for some years and fought 
him alone. He had dragged his party after him 
into many a danger. He had compelled them 
more than once to fight when many of them 
would fain have held hack, and where none of 
them saw any chance of victory. Now, at last, 
the battle had been given to his hands, and it 
was a matter of necessity that the triumph should 
bring back to power the man whose energy and 
eloquence had inspired the struggle. The Queen 
sent for Mr. Gladstone, and a new chapter of 
English history opened, with the opening of 
which this work has to close. 



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Students of the daily life, the personal and geographical 
environments of Jesus and his disciples, will find the work 
invaluable. — N~. Y. Herald. 

A book like Dr. Thomson's carries the reader back to the 
time of the Saviour, and makes the best of commentaries for 
the Bible to-day. — N. Y. Journal of Commerce. 

The scholar will find an abundance to interest him in every 
chapter, while the style is so clear and graphic that the child 
may read it with attentive interest. — Observer, N. Y. 

His work is more than a mere geographical description of 
Palestine, though he has given much attention to that depart- 
ment ; or a mere delineation of Eastern manners, though it 
would be difficult to find anywhere else so graphic and accu- 
rate a portraiture of the daily life of the Orientals. * * * Al- 
most every book in the Bible has been laid under tribute, 
■at in some degree illuminated by his treatment. * * * After 
studying this volume we feel that a pilgrimage to Jerusalem 
would not add much to the conceptions regarding it which 
we have obtained from these pages. — Christian at Work, 
N.Y. 

Every Christian family ought to have it beside the family 
Bible, as the best key to its proper understanding furnished 
by modern Christian scholarship. — Baptist Weekly, N.Y. 

Dr. Thomson has studied the field with painstaking care ; 
and, studying in the light of the Scriptural narrative, he has 
collected a store of detailed and general knowledge such as 
can be found in no other existing work. — Boston Traveller. 

Dr. Thomson is a pleasant writer, and to all lovers of de- 
scriptive reading, as well as to Bible students, his book will 
prove welcome. — Boston Post. 

The information which may be derived from Dr. Thomson's 
careful and authentic descriptions of the manners and cus- 
toms, the natural products, and common sights of the Holy 
Land, is fresh and true, and is not to be found in the works 
of other writers, who have not, as a rule, possessed the advan- 
tages, the scholarship, or the Biblical knowledge of this vet- 
eran authority. — Athenccum, London. 



THE LAND AND THE BOOK ; or, Bibli- 
cal Illustrations drawn from the Manners 
and Customs, the Scenes and Scenery, of 
the Holy Land: Central Palestine and 
Phoenicia. By Wm. M. Thomson, D.D., 
Forty-five Years a Missionary in Syria 
and Palestine. 130 Illustrations and 
Maps. 8vo, Ornamental Cloth, $6 00; 
Sheep, $7 00 ; Half Morocco, $8 50 ; 
Full Morocco, Gilt Edges, $10 50. 

He has seen and felt what he describes, and his narration 
is a series of pen-pictures. — Chicago Journal. 

With the enthusiasm of a convert, and the self-denial of a 
Crusader, he has gone over all the spots hallowed by the feet 
of saints and pilgrims from the earliest day. His descriptions 
are fresh and vigorous, his style simple and perspicacious, and 
the whole subject-matter instinct with information. — Boston 
Commonwealth. 

This is the most beautiful part of the land, and the portion 
richer in historical incidents and the remains of the past. * * * 
Or the many attractive volumes on Palestine this is certainly 
the most desirable. — Central Christian Advocate, St. Louis. 

We have in these two volumes the accumulated treasury of 
all the information concerning the land of the Bible which 
the labors of the present generation have yielded. — Lutheran 
Quarterly, Gettysburg. 

Dr. Thomson writes with all the enthusiasm of a life-long 
believer, yet at the same time temperately and with due re- 
gard to the work of other travellers and explorers. In his 
first chapter he takes leave of Jerusalem, passing on thence to 
Bethlehem, the City of David, the birthplace of our Lord and 
Saviour. Travelling onward he visits and describes Nablus, 
Samaria, and the Samaritans ; thence he goes to Nazareth, 
where our Lord lived the greater part of his life on earth, and 
gives a full and very interesting description of this old town 
and its associations. Advancing northwardly, he explores the 
vicinity of Tiberias and the Lake of Gennesareth, and termi- 
nates his journeyings at Tyre and Sidon on the shore of the 
Mediterranean. * * * We can hardly wish for our readers a 
greater treat than the possession of this and the previous vol- 
ume by the same author. They will increase the value of 
every library which has them not, and will furnish pure and 
lasting satisfaction to all students and intelligent readers of 
Holy Scripture. — The Guardian, N. Y. 

He has illustrated the Book from the Land, and in showing 
the connection which unites them has imparted a vital, an 
imperishable interest, to both. For a popular account of the 
manners and customs, as well as the scenery of the Holy 
Land, it is not only not approached by any similar publica- 
tion, but it leaves little or nothing to be desired. — N. Y. Mail 
and Express. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 



JfcF" Harper & Brothers will send either of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United Slates, 

on receipt of the price. 



CHAKLES DICKENS'S WORKS. 

HARPER'S HOUSEHOLD EDITION. 



Harper's Household Dickens, Complete. la 16 volumes, Paper, $14 00 ; Cloth, $22 00. In 8 volumes, Cloth, 
$20 00 ; Imitation Half Morocco, $22 00 ; Half Calf, $40 00. 



OLIVER TWIST. 

The Adventures of Oliver Twist. With 28 Illus- 
trations by J. Mahoney. Svo, Paper, 50 cents ; 
Cloth, $1 00. 

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. 

The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. 
With 59 Illustrations by F. Barnard. Svo, Paper, 
$1 00 ; Cloth, $1 50. 

THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. 

The Old Curiosity Shop. With 54 Illustrations 
by Thomas Worth. Svo, Paper, 75 cents ; Cloth, 
$1 25. 

DAVID C0PPERFIELD, 

The Personal History of David Copperfield. With 
Portrait of Author, and 61 Illustrations by F. Bar- 
nard. Svo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

D0MBEY AND SON. 

Dombey and Son. With 52 Illustrations by W. 
L. Sheppard. Svo, Paper, §1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. 
With 52 Illustrations by C. S. Keinhart. Svo, Pa- 
per, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

PICKWICK PAPERS. 

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. 
With 52 Illustrations by Thomas Nast. Svo, Pa- 
per, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

BLEAK HOUSE. 

Bleak House. With 61 Illustrations by F. Bar- 
nard, Svo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, %1 50. 



LITTLE D0RRIT. 

Little Dorrit. With 5S Illustrations by J. Maho- 
ney. Svo, Paper, $1 00: Cloth, $1 50.' 

BARNABY RUDGE. 

Barnaby Kudge. With 44 Illustrations by F. Bar- 
nard. Svo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

A TALE OF TWO CITIES. 

A Tale of Two Cities. With 41 Illustrations. 
Svo, Paper, 50 cents ; Cloth, $1 00. 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 

Our Mutual Friend. With 58 Illustrations by J. 
Mahoney. Svo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

CHRISTMAS STORIES. 

Christmas Stories. With 27 Illustrations by E. A. 
Abbey. Svo, Paper, %l 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

GREAT EXPECTATIONS. 

Great Expectations. With 30 Illustrations by F. 
A. Fraser. Svo, Paper, $1 00; Cloth, $1 50. 

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, &c. 

The Uncommercial Traveller, Hard Times, and 
the Mystery of Edwin Drood. With 45 Illustra- 
tions. " Svo, Paper, $1 00 ; Cloth, $1 50. 

PICTURES FROM ITALY, &c. 

Pictures from Italy, Sketches by Boz, and Ameri- 
can Notes. With 64 Illustrations by Thomas Nast 
and Arthur B. Frost. Svo, Paper, $1 00 ; Cloth, 
$1 50. 



We have no doubt that an edition of Dickens which has so much to commend it to public favor, in form, paper, type, press-work, illustrations, 
and price (for it is really a marvel of cheapness), will meet with a very extensive sale. — N. Y. Evening Post. 

The type is large, the paper and binding very handsome, and the illustrations excellent. This edition will be a charming accumulation, in 
new dress, of the works of that indispensable and immortal photographer of life. — Brooklyn Eayh. 



Publ[shed by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



A. HANDSOME GIFT. 



THE WAVERLEY NOVELS. 

By SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. 
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED. 




ARMS OF SIB WALTER SCOTT. 



THItlTIE EDITION : 48 volumes, bound in Green Cloth, $1 00 per volume; in Half 
Morocco, Gilt Tops, $1 50 per volume ; in Half Morocco, Extra, $2 25 per volume. 

HOLYROOD EDITION: 48 volumes, bound in Brown Cloth, 75 cents per volume; in 
Half Morocco, Gilt Tops, $1 50 per volume ; in Half Morocco, Extra, $2 25 per volume. 

POPULAR EDITION: 24 volumes (two vols, in one), bound in Green Cloth, $1 25 per 
volume ; in Half Morocco, $2 25 per volume ; in Half Morocco, Extra, $3 00 per volume. 

Each of the above Editions contains the full number of 2000 Illustrations. 

They are printed from large type, on handsome paper, and are the cheapest, best, and most legible Mi 
tdons of these favorite Novels ever offered to the American people. Complete Sets in Boxes. 



"WAVERLEY. 

GUY MANNERING. 

THE ANTIQUARY. 

ROB ROY. 

OLD MORTALITY. 

THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. 

A LEGEND OF MONTROSE. 

THE BRXDE OF LAMMERMOOR 

THE BLACK DWARF. 

IVANHOE. 



THE MONASTERY. 

THE ABBOT. 

KENLLWORTH. 

THE PIRATE. 

THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. 

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK. 

QUENTLN DURWARD. 

ST. RONANS WELL. 

REDGAUNTLET. 

THE BETROTHED. 



THE TALISMAN. 

WOODSTOCK 

CHRONICLES OF THE CANONGATB 

THE HIGHLAND WIDOW ETC 
THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH. 
ANNE OF GETERSTEIN. 
COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS. 
CASTLE DANGEROUS. 
THE SURGEONS DAUGHTER. 
GLOSSARY. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

EST Harper <fe Brothers will send any of the above works by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, 

on receipt of the price. 



SUBSCRIBE TO HARPER'S MAGAZINE 

for 1884. 



THE publishers of Haepee's Magazine respectfully invite public attention to some of its leading attractions 
for the comino- year. Their enterprise, aided by the co-operation of the best writers and artists, has been 
abundantly rewarded by the increased, success of the Magazine, which has to-day an American circulation 
laro-er than it has ever had before, and which will enter upon its new year with an edition for England alone 
of over fifty thousand copies. They will endeavor to maintain its position as the best Magazine for the home, 
alwavs fully abreast of the times, and always advancing its standard of literary, artistic, and mechanical excel- 
lence. 

NEW SERIAL NOVELS. 

In the January Number will be begun a new novel of startling literary interest, by William Black, en- 
titled "Judith Shakespeare." A Daughter of Shakespeare is the heroine of the novel, the scene of which is 
located in Stratford-on-Avon. The story will be illustrated by E. A. Abbey, who has made special studies for 
this work. 

The December Number will contain the first instalment of a new novel entitled " Nature's Serial Story," 
by E. P. Roe ; illustrated by W. H. Gibson and F. Dielman. 

SIS TOBY AND BIOGRAPHY. 

Upon the conclusion of Colonel Higginson's American History series, Teeadwell Walden will contribute 
a series of papers which, under the title of " The Hall of William Rufus," will present an interesting panorama 
of English history, with fine illustrations. Illustrated papers will be given, treating dynastic families: "The 
Hohenzollerns," by Heebeet Tuttle; "The House of Orange," by Prof. W. T. Hewett, etc.; also, illustrated^ 
biographical sketches of the Prince of Wales, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Prince Bismarck. The series on the Old ' 
Masters will be continued. 

DESCBIBTIVE BABEBS. 

Geoege H. Boughton will contribute illustrated articles on Brabant. Under the title of " A Wild Goose- 
Chase," Feank D. Millet will contribute three papers on the Hanseatic Towns of the Baltic. In an early 
Number will be resumed the series of Canadian articles by Chaeles H. Fabnham, illustrated. R. F. Zogbaum, 
the author of " War Pictures in Time of Peace," will contribute similar descriptions of German and English 
Military Manoeuvres, effectively illustrated. From time to time articles on great American cities will appear, 
amply illustrated. A number of illustrated articles on the Great Northwest are in preparation; also papers on 
prominent American Industries. 

SHOBT STORIES AND SKETCHES. 

In this field the forthcoming volumes will present features of unusual interest. W. D. Howells will con- 
tribute humorous dramatic sketches, similar to "The Register" in the December Number. Chaeles Reade 
will continue his series of short stories, to be followed by Sketches of Bible Characters, in which scriptural 
heroes will be presented as seen by a student of human nature and life. 

SBECIAL ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Apart from the illustrations for descriptive articles and stories, which will be engraved in the best style, 
our readers may expect frequent reproductions of the finest works of art executed by the old masters and by 
livino- artists; also, original drawings from E. A. Abbey and Alpeed Paesons illustrating the works of English 
poets. 

OLD FEATURES, EVER NEW. 

The Editor's Easy Chair and Editor's Drawer have become household words. The former has for thirty 
years been conducted by Geoege William Cuetis, and its every paragraph bears the stamp of his earnest 
thought — eloquently and gracefully expressed — on all subjects of current social interest. The Editor 's Drawer 
is conducted by Chaeles Dudley Waenee. His own contributions and those accepted by him will greatly 
enhance the entertainment of this unique miscellany of humorous anecdote. 



HARPER S MAGAZINE $4 00 per Year 

HARPER'S WEEKLY 4 00 per Year. 

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HARPER 8 YOUNG PEOPLE 1 50 per Year. 

HARPER'S FRANKLIN SQUARE LIBRARY (52 Nos.) 10 00 per Year. 

Postage free to all subscribers in the United States or Canada. 



Remittances should be made by Post-Office Money Order or Draft, to avoid chance of loss. 

Address: HARPER & BROTHERS, Fbankxin Squaee, N. Y. 



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